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Both of the other boys just shrugged.

“Well, then …,” Katherine sputtered a little, shifting gears. “Tell us this: When are you ever going to release the ripple? Is everything okay with time?”

JB seemed to be trying hard to hide a smile at Katherine’s using a time-travel term like “release the ripple.” JB had explained this to them back when they’d first learned about being missing children from history. JB and his fellow agents had frozen the impact of the kids’ being stolen; the whole point of returning them was to allow time to follow its natural courses again.

“We already did release the ripple,” JB said. “Everything’s fine.”

“But … but … unless it changed in the last ten minutes, none of the Web sites have the right information
about what really happened to Chip and Alex and Richard the Third,” Katherine objected.

JB stopped a few steps away from her.

“Did you expect history to say that Richard got religious advice from time travelers the night before he died?” JB asked. “Did you want it on Wikipedia that Chip and Alex were saved at the last minute and carried off to the twenty-first century?”

“No.” Katherine shook her head stubbornly. “But people should know that Richard wasn’t all bad. He repented at the end. He wanted to give his crown back.”

“Sit,” JB told the sheepdog. The dog eased his hindquarters down onto the sidewalk. Then he lay all the way down and put his head on his front paws, as if he expected this to take a while.

“Time needed Richard to be a villain,” JB explained carefully. “The year 1483 was something of a turning point in history. Before that, killing for political gain was … expected. Ordinary. But the way the princes disappeared from the Tower, the way everyone thought they knew what had happened, the way people were so horrified at Richard killing kids … that changed history. Killing children became something you usually couldn’t do and still be considered a decent human being. It became part of the change in how people viewed children, how
they viewed humanity. Richard was held up forever after that as an example of what leaders shouldn’t do. In some ways this was almost as important as the Magna Carta.”

JB sounded as earnest as a college professor trying to explain why history mattered. Jonah couldn’t quite remember what the Magna Carta was, but everything else kind of made sense.

Of course Katherine wasn’t satisfied.

“But that’s not fair to Richard,” she complained. “He doesn’t deserve his bad reputation.”

“Do you think that matters to Richard?” JB asked. “He died five minutes after offering Chip the Crown.”

“But did he go to heaven?” Katherine persisted.

“That’s between him and God, not him and history,” JB said.

Alex started, jerking so spastically that he kicked the basketball, and would have sent it spinning out into the street if Chip hadn’t caught it. Amazingly, Chip still seemed to have a swordsman’s quick reflexes.

“
You
believe in God?” Alex asked JB incredulously. “But you know how to travel through time. You’re a scientist.” He hesitated. “Aren’t you?”

JB rolled his eyes.

“It amazes me how people of your time set up such a false dichotomy between science and religion. Fortunately,
that only lasts for another … well, I can’t tell you that,” he said, stopping himself just in time. “But I assure you, the more I travel through time, the more I witness, the more I realize that there are things that are both strange and wonderful, far beyond human comprehension.” He turned to Jonah and Katherine. “Like how a couple of untrained kids could save time, when expert professionals would have failed every time.”

Katherine tossed her head as if she was ready to launch into a victory dance:
So there! We showed you!

“You helped us some,” Jonah said modestly. “With Hadley signaling us there by Chip and Alex on the battlefield so we’d find them in time. And with how you let us use invisibility.”

JB shook his head.

“But you did everything wrong,” he said. “We’re still cataloging how many sacred rules of time travel you broke. No certified time traveler would have dared to speak directly to Richard—and you did it twice!”

“Why didn’t you yank us out of time when we were breaking all those rules?” Jonah asked.

“We, uh, couldn’t,” JB said sheepishly. “We kept being blocked by the impact of your actions. And then … we kept discovering that everything you did worked.”

“But …” Alex shifted uncomfortably. “We didn’t stay
with our tracers exactly. Chip and Jonah and Katherine and me … we did change history. Why doesn’t anyone know that?”

“Well,” JB said. “There was the matter of a certain Shakespeare quote being widely used more than a hundred years ahead of time. …”

“Oops,” Alex said.

JB shrugged.

“In the scheme of things that was
nothing
,” he said. “Otherwise … everyone who heard Richard offer Chip the throne died on that battlefield. So did everyone who saw you separate from your tracers, saw the princes vanish into thin air. The way everything worked, it almost seemed … preordained.”

He seemed embarrassed saying the word, which seemed out of place on this sunny autumn day, in twenty-first-century America.

“Still,” Alex said. He looked around, as if suddenly scared. “You can’t tell me nobody else thought of this. I’m not ruining anything talking about this—”

“What?” Katherine demanded. “Would you just spit it out?”

Alex looked down, biting his lip. Then he peered back up at JB.

“Chip and me, we still don’t belong in the twenty-first
century,” Alex said. “Okay, so it didn’t mess up the fifteenth century to have Jonah and Katherine rescuing us—that’s great. Whatever. But anything we do here, now, aren’t we changing
this
time period? Should we plan never to come up with any brilliant scientific discoveries, never to have a job, never to get married and have kids, never to have an impact at all?” He looked over at Chip, whose jaw had dropped. “Sorry. I had to say it.”

JB stepped forward and crouched down before both boys.

“Alex, I can see where you would think that,” he said gently. “But you’re proceeding from a flawed hypothesis. Or … incomplete information. You don’t have to worry about trying to stay invisible in this time. Live. Use your brain to make all the discoveries you want, scientific or otherwise. Fall in love, marry, have children—well, years from now, I mean. Have an impact. There are time experts who would have agreed with your assessment, before. But we’re all seeing things a little differently now. This time period is much more in flux than we thought. It’s starting to seem like … well, like maybe the time crash was supposed to happen. Like maybe it’s supposed to be part of history.” He chuckled. “We’re not even worried anymore that Angela DuPre is never going to marry that plumber we thought she was supposed to marry. Which would be a
relief for Hadley …” He muttered this almost to himself, then looked back up at the kids. “All sorts of things are changing. And that’s okay.”

If Jonah were making any bets about which of them was most likely to make the scientific discoveries of the future, he’d put his money on Alex. Even Katherine always did better in science at school than Jonah ever did. But Jonah had a thought about time travel that nobody else seemed to have figured out.

What if all those changes are because of us too?
he wondered.
What if we had an even bigger impact than we’ll ever know?

“Speaking of changes …,” JB began, putting his knee down and turning slightly so he could look at all of the kids at once. “I really didn’t come here just to talk.”

Katherine put her hands on her hips.

“I knew it!” she said. “You’re still going to try to get Jonah to take his turn now, aren’t you? I told you, I am not going to let that happen!” She whirled toward the house as if she was about to let out a huge bellow:
Mom! Mom! Come quick! Call 911! Someone’s trying to kidnap Jonah!

“Will you just let me explain?” JB interrupted. “Before you start panicking?”

Katherine looked confused for a moment, then let the air fizzle out of her lungs.

“Explain fast,” she muttered.

“We are ready to send the next kid back in time—but it’s not Jonah,” JB added quickly. “It’s Andrea Crowell. Remember her?”

“Oh, yeah,” Jonah said. “The really quiet girl with the braids?”

“That’s right,” JB said. He began toying with a twig that had landed on the driveway. He pushed it one way, then the other. He looked back up, directly at Jonah. “We’ve run all sorts of projections, like we always do. And we keep finding unbelievable odds against success. Unless …”

“Unless what?” Katherine said suspiciously, glaring down at JB.

“Unless she has help from people who aren’t time travel experts,” JB said.

“Us?” Alex gasped.

JB nodded.

“Partially. It’s Jonah, Katherine, and …” He grimaced, as if he found what he was about to say preposterous. “This dog.” He lifted the leash toward Katherine’s hand. “Don’t ask me why that combination works. I don’t know. I don’t even know why the analyst thought to include the dog in the projection. But … sending the two of you and the dog with Andrea gives us our best chance of success.”

Katherine pointedly did not take the leash from JB’s hand. She looked like she was in shock.

“You want us to go back in time again,” Jonah said numbly. “And not even to my own time. To help someone else.”

“I thought we were done.” Katherine spoke as if she was in a trance, staring off past the basketball hoop, past the neighbor’s chrysanthemums. “I thought all I had to do was make sure you didn’t take Jonah away. … Do you know I have nightmares about the fifteenth century? Every night I’m back there on the battlefield. Every night I’m invisible, and I can’t get Chip and Alex to listen to me, to hear what they have to do. …”

“Are you refusing?” JB asked.

“Oh, I didn’t say that …,” Katherine mumbled dazedly.

JB didn’t pressure them. He didn’t say, “You do realize that all of history is depending on you, don’t you?” He didn’t say, “You don’t really have a choice.” Jonah almost wished he would pressure them and try to boss them around—because then it would be easier to say no. Then it would be all about standing up for himself, about defending his rights. Defending his life.

This was something else. This was leaving him free to imagine another kid, Andrea, going back in time all by herself, having no one at all to help her through. This was forcing him to be all mature and self-sacrificing and responsible—and choosing it for himself.

He sighed.

“I’ll do it,” he said.

“Really?” Katherine stared at him. “Well, that’s just great. It’s horrible having you for a big brother, always trying to set a good example. Because now I have to do it too!” Despite her words, there was a note of excitement in her voice now. “
Please
, can’t Chip and Alex come too?”

“No,” JB said. “Sorry. After their experiences they’d be just a little bit too trigger happy. Er—arrow happy.”

Another time period with bows and arrows?
Jonah thought.
Great. I bet they won’t have decent food then, either
.

“Katherine,” Chip said. “Please …”

Katherine glanced at him, and it was almost like watching Mom and Dad communicate silently. It was like she was telling Chip,
Don’t get all mushy or macho-boy protective on me now. Don’t make this harder than it already is
.

“To you it’ll be like they’re just gone an instant,” JB assured Chip.

“But I’ll know,” Chip retorted. “I’ll know that they’ll really be gone much, much longer. They’ll be so far away. …”

He was gazing toward Katherine, but Katherine dived down toward the dog’s head, burying her face in the fur.

“So if the dog’s coming with us, we need to know his name,” Katherine said, speaking almost directly into the fur.

“It’s Dare,” JB said softly. “The dog’s name is Dare.”

Jonah knew he should be asking about the exact time period they were going to, and Andrea Crowell’s other identity, and his own identity and time period as well. But for a moment he just sat there in the grass peering around his neighborhood: at the peaked roofs of his neighbors’ houses, at the wide street where he’d ridden his bike so many times, at the mailboxes and garage doors and sewer drains. … If he didn’t stop himself, he’d start blubbering about how much he was going to miss the fire hydrant across the street.

It’s incredible how precious everything looks when you know you’re about to lose it
, Jonah thought. He wondered if Richard III had felt that way in his last moments on the battlefield at Bosworth; he wondered if Chip and Alex had felt that way leaving their tracers behind, leaving their fifteenth-century lives forever. Someday he’d have to ask them. Someday after he’d met his own tracer. But for now …

“So, we’re going with Andrea Crowell, huh?” Jonah said, trying to sound cocksure and confident, like going back in time again was no big deal. “Does
she
know what we’re all getting into?”

“No,” JB said. “Nobody does, really. To quote a famous philosopher revered in my time, ‘But this is no different from regular life. When have you ever known what’s going to happen in the future?’”

Wait a minute
, Jonah thought.
I said that. Back at Westminster, with Katherine. Does that mean I’m going to be a famous philosopher in the future? Does that mean I’m going to be revered?

There wasn’t time to ask.

People have been trying to figure out what really happened to Edward V and his brother Richard ever since the fifteenth century. Here are the facts that everyone seems to agree on:

Edward IV, the king of England, died on April 9, 1483, and his twelve-year-old son, Edward, was named as his successor. Edward V’s coronation was scheduled but never held. Instead, after accusations about the boy’s parents, his uncle was proclaimed king and crowned on July 6, 1483.

Edward and his younger brother were known to be in the Tower of London during the summer of 1483. Then they vanished.

And already, writing that last sentence—“Then they vanished”—I have to resort to extreme vagueness to avoid adding qualifiers like “and most people think that …” or “at some point within the next year or two …” Most people seem to think that the boys were murdered—but were they? If they were, who did it? When? How? Why?