Sabotaged

36

Jonah whirled around and raced back toward the others.

“Hey, guys!” he said. “Come look at this!”

He decided he wouldn’t tell them what he’d figured out-he’d let them look first and see what they concluded.

“Shh,” Katherine hissed at him. “Antonio and Brendan-er, their tracers-they’re trying to decide how to get off the island without letting John White see all the animal bones.”

“We should protect him from knowing the evil that was here,” Antonio was saying, as his tracer would have. “Since it wasn’t as bad as we thought, since he still believes he will find his family, since he’s such an old man…”

“But he’s a ghost-man,” Brendan replied, in his tracer’s voice. “Ghost-men don’t know that it is evil to treat our brother animals that way, in death. It will not matter to him.”

Jonah barely listened, because all he could think about was the fresh grave. Who was in it? Who had dug it? Brendan and Antonio had said Indians were afraid to come to Croatoan Island, so it probably wasn’t anyone native. Andrea had said the English never went to Croatoan to look for the Roanoke colonists.

Well, not that history recorded, Jonah corrected himself. John White’s here right now. And that’s not even a change we can blame on Second, because the tracer’s here…

Second! What if Second had killed someone and buried him on Croatoan Island?

Jonah was feeling a little bit dizzy, and it wasn’t just because of the heat.

“Maybe it would worry the old man more to have us cover his eyes than it would to see the desecrated animal bones,” Antonio was concluding. “Let us just leave then and be done with this place.”

“No, wait!” Jonah shouted. “There’s something I have to show you before we go!”

Katherine and Andrea turned toward Jonah-even the dog turned toward Jonah. But Antonio and Brendan were still locked in place with their tracers.

Then the boys’ tracers stiffened. They jerked their heads around, side to side, their faces masks of fear.

“We’ll leave quickly,” Antonio snapped, and Brendan’s tracer nodded.

Brendan pulled back from his tracer to report to the others, “That was so weird! My tracer thinks he heard a ghost, but I didn’t hear a thing.”

It was something that happened in original time, that didn’t happen now? Jonah thought. Because of something time travelers changed? Was it us who did that? Or… Second?

Jonah didn’t have time to try these theories on the others-or to show them the grave. Brendan and Antonio were pulling John White’s tracer out of yet another empty hut.

“We go,” Antonio was saying, his tracer slipping back into the simple words he used with John White. “Must leave now. Danger.”

Dazedly John White’s tracer nodded and stepped forward. But Antonio and Brendan were rushing him along too fast.

“Wait-before-shouldn’t-” Jonah couldn’t decide what to tell the others.

Antonio and Brendan and John White’s tracer were already at the edge of the village. John White caught his first glimpse of the piles of animal bones. He turned toward Antonio, horror and disbelief painted across his entire expression.

“He understands exactly what this means,” Andrea whispered. “But they’re in such a hurry they don’t see-Brendan! Antonio! Watch out!”

Brendan and Antonio slowed down and looked around. But their tracers plowed forward, shoving John White’s tracer on.

John White’s tracer stumbled, wobbled-and then plunged straight down to the ground.