Sabotaged

5

What Jonah had first taken for a few downed trees out in the center of the clearing were actually the remains of a tall wooden fence. The fence we saw in the scene when Virginia Dare was born? Jonah wondered. A shudder ran through his whole body. That scene had seemed so happy, so hopeful, and now it was clear that everything had been destroyed. Rusting, arched metal that might have been the remains of a suit of armor lay off to one side of the clearing, beside an overturned old-fashioned trunk, half-rotting in a trench. There were no houses anymore, no people. Vines were creeping over the last part of the fence that was still even slightly upright, as if they were on a mission to pull it down too. It was no wonder that Jonah had first mistaken the scene for more wilderness: Soon it would all be wilderness again.

“I don’t remember any of this,” Andrea murmured sadly.

Dare whined beside her, as if he was upset too.

“Andrea, you aren’t supposed to remember any of it,” Katherine said briskly, sounding more like herself again. Or maybe Jonah’s ears were just functioning better. “You won’t remember being Virginia Dare until you step into your tracer.”

“No, I mean…,” Andrea let her voice trail off. “Maybe I just went the wrong way.”

She threw an anguished glance over her shoulder, as if she expected to find some other way through the woods, away from this devastated clearing. Jonah knew she would see nothing but more trees.

“Andrea…, I think this is the Roanoke Colony,” Jonah whispered. “Or what’s left of it.”

“Really?” Katherine whispered back. Now she was the one who seemed inexplicably excited. “Then…”

She gave one cautious look around before stepped out into the clearing. She peered at each tree ringing the clearing, paused for a second, then went over to the partially collapsed wooden fence. She seemed to be trying to lift the logs, to look at each one. Jonah was waiting for her to discover that that was impossible, when suddenly she let out a shriek.

“Katherine! Shh!” Jonah hissed, all his fears coming back about wild animals, hostile natives, or some other enemy.

“This is it! This is it!” Katherine answered, her voice screeching even louder. “Come look!”

Katherine was acting like she’d discovered the Seven Cities of Gold-wasn’t that one of the things the early explorers had been looking for? Jonah glanced around quickly and sneaked out to join his sister. Dare padded along beside him, and even Andrea crept forward after a few seconds.

“There!” Katherine exclaimed, pointing at the top log. “Don’t you see it?”

Jonah didn’t.

Impatiently, Katherine grabbed his hand and rubbed his fingers across the exposed side of the log.

“Oh, there’s something carved into the tree?” Jonah asked. “Letters?”

He could feel a crescent-a C, maybe? And then maybe an R… He tilted his head, so he could see the log from a better angle.

“It says, Croatoan,” Katherine said. “Croatoan!”

“So?” Jonah asked.