Sabotaged

25

“John White did,” Andrea said quietly, pride in her voice. “He was an artist. Is. That was his job on all his trips to Roanoke Island. He was supposed to record views of the local people, the local plants and animals. To get more people to come here. And just to show what everything was like.”

“Let me guess,” Katherine said. “Nobody had invented cameras yet?”

Andrea shook her head.

“John White has been widely praised in modern times for his sympathetic depiction of Native Americans,” she said, as if quoting. “It’s a tragedy that so little of his work survived.”

Jonah shook his head. Art supplies! Whatever happened to going back to England for everything the colonists needed? Like… food? And whoever heard of an artist also being a governor? Were the English trying to make their colony fail?

The tracer boys were pulling other things out of the chest, so Jonah did the same. Quill pens. Little jars that must have contained inks and paints. Tablets of blank paper. Tablets full of pictures.

The papers and jars were wrapped in cloth-no, it was clothing: another shirt just like the one John White was already wearing and two dresses that seemed to amaze the tracer boys.

“I bet he was bringing those for Eleanor,” Andrea murmured.

The tracer boys held the dresses up against their own chests and laughed, just like the football players at school who had dressed up like cheerleaders for Halloween.

“Oh, grow up!” Katherine muttered.

John White’s tracer must have said something similar, because the tracer boys quickly put the dresses back into the chest. At the old man’s direction, they picked up a tablet instead and began looking through the pictures. John White waved his arm, apparently telling the boys, Turn the page, turn the page, that’s not, the picture I want to show you… Jonah pulled the real version of the same tablet out of the chest, so he could turn pages along with the tracer boys.

On the first page was a drawing of an Indian village with huts made of curved branches. Jonah looked at the picture, then glanced the disheveled huts around him.

“Do you think… It’s a drawing of this village we’re sitting in right now, isn’t it?” he asked, holding up the page so Andrea and Katherine could see.

“Yes,” Andrea whispered. “Except… everything’s in good shape. And there are people.”

The drawing was actually full of people. Indians-dancing, cooking, laughing, harvesting healthy-looking corn… They practically jumped off the page, they looked so alive. Jonah could see on their faces how happy they were, how proud they were of their thriving village.

Where had they gone? What had happened to them?

The tracer boys were holding the tracer tablet out to John White, pointing to a particular picture. Jonah could practically hear them asking, “Do you mean this one?”

John White’s tracer nodded vigorously, tears glistening in his eyes.

Jonah glanced at the picture the tracer boys held up and quickly flipped through his tablet until he located the same drawing.

It was a woman holding a tiny baby tightly wrapped in a blanket. The woman’s hair was pulled back from her face rather severely, but her eyes shone with love.

At the bottom of the page were the words Eleanor and Virginia.

Katherine gently touched the woman’s face in the picture.

“She looks a lot like you, Andrea,” Katherine murmured. “I didn’t notice when JB was showing us that DVD… or whatever that was.” She laughed a little, an embarrassed-sounding snort. “But she’d just given birth then. Maybe women don’t look like themselves when they’ve just given birth.”

Jonah wasn’t going to comment about that. He peered down at the picture: It was definitely the woman from the scene JB had shown them. And she did look like Andrea or like what Andrea could look like in ten or fifteen years.

He looked over at Andrea, wanting to compare. But Andrea had turned her face to the side.

Meanwhile, the tracers were still conferring over the picture. Both tracer boys were shaking their heads, shrugging apologetically. Disappointment clouded the face of John White’s tracer.

It was so clear what each of the tracers had been saying. John White had been asking if the tracer boys had ever seen his daughter and granddaughter, if they knew where his family was.

The tracer boys had said no.

John White’s tracer swallowed hard, struggling to regain his composure. He weakly lifted his arm and swiped it through the air, telling the boys to turn the page again.

The next picture-which Jonah turned to in the real version of the tablet as well-was of an Indian. He stood proudly, posing with his chin held high. He was wearing nothing but a loincloth, unless you counted the tattoos on his chests and the feathers in his hair. The word at the bottom of this page was Manteo.

“Manteo was the Indian who got along with the English the best,” Andrea said. “Do you think these boys know him? That might be a clue!”

But the tracer boys were already shaking their heads. John White’s tracer grimaced and lowered his head into his hands.

“No, no-don’t give up!” Andrea exploded. “I’m here! Look at me!” She waved her hands in front of the tracer’s face, but of course he looked right through her. She dived through the tracer and grabbed the real man by the shoulders.

“Why can’t you see me?” she shouted. “Why can’t you hear me? Why don’t you know I’m here?”

“Andrea,” Katherine said softly. “I don’t think-”

But Andrea had stopped yelling. A horrified expression was spreading over her face.

“Look at him,” she mumbles. “Without his tracer he looks… he looks…”

Awful was the word that jumped into Jonah’s mind. Without his tracer, John White was ghostly pale, but with beads of sweat trickling down into his hair. His cheeks were sunken, the hollows almost an ashy gray.

“He looks like he’s going to die,” Andrea whispered. “Quick! Help me put him back with his tracer!”

But just as she started to tug on his shoulder-before Jonah had a chance to even think whether that was the right thing to do-John White’s tracer lay back down, rejoining the real man completely, even down to the closed eyes. Was the tracer giving up?

No. He was still struggling to speak, even as he seemed to be slipping toward unconsciousness.

“Please,” John White said, the tracer and the man talking as one now that they were back together, thinking alike. “Please take me to Croatoan then. Canst thou take me to Croatoan Island?”

Jonah glanced up just in time to see the tracer boys nodding their heads yes.