Torn-missing 4 (7 page)

“Good job,” someone whispered, the ghost of a voice.

It seemed to be coming from Jonah’s cloak.

The Elucidator?
Jonah wondered.
JB?

He wanted so badly to yell out,
Okay, did that fix everything now? Are we back on track?
But he was only about a foot away from the nearest sailor, and it would be impossible to converse with his own cloak without being noticed. He looked around for Katherine, thinking maybe she’d have some good suggestion about what to do.

But of course nobody had scooped up Katherine and tossed her into the shallop.

Katherine was still back on the ship.

Katherine was standing by the railing, a few steps apart from the mutineers. Her mostly see-through face was twisted in anguish. As soon as Jonah looked her way, she began exaggeratedly mouthing words. Jonah wouldn’t have said that he was very good at reading lips—especially mostly invisible lips—but he could tell what she was trying to say:
What should I do? What should I do?

She pointed down at the ship, and lifted her other hand questioningly, then pointed to herself and out toward the lowering shallop. Her sign language was clear too:
Should I stay on the ship? Or should I try to climb into the shallop?
Now she lifted both hands, palms open to the sky, and grimaced. This meant,
How could I possibly get into the shallop now?

With all the mutineers clustered near the railing, Katherine wouldn’t be able to reach the shallop without
knocking a few of them out of her way. Anyhow, the shallop was being lowered on ropes, and it was far enough down that Katherine couldn’t jump in without knocking everything off-kilter.

Jonah could imagine Katherine trying to climb down one of the ropes, throwing the entire shallop off balance and pitching everyone—Jonah, Henry Hudson, John King, and five sick, dying sailors—into the icy water below.

“Don’t!” he said out loud. “You can’t!”

Who cared what the sailors around him thought he meant?

Katherine’s face twisted even more. Jonah didn’t need lip-reading or sign language to know what she was thinking:
It’s bad enough to be stranded in 1611, expecting to starve to death, but to be stranded
alone?

“You’ve got a better chance of surviving on the ship,” Jonah said, and this was meant as a parting gift to his sister, his best effort at a hopeful good-bye. He wasn’t sure if this was true or not. Sure, all the food was on the ship. And sure, Katherine was invisible, so she could sneak around eating whatever she wanted. But those mutineers seemed a little nutso—and they had weapons—and what if Katherine lost her invisibility again?

Jonah wondered if he should toss the Elucidator up to Katherine, so at least she’d have that, if it worked again.
But how could he do that without everyone noticing?

Jonah had been staring so intently at his sister that he’d mostly ignored everything going on around her. But now he let his gaze slide over to the men clustered along the railing. One man in particular was watching Jonah very carefully. As soon as his eyes met Jonah’s, the man called out, “Aye, lad, I know you are only trying to protect me. But I know who I trust the most on water.”

The man evidently thought Jonah had been talking to
him.

Jonah wanted to say,
No, no, I’m talking to my sister. Who you can’t see because she’s invisible
—or something that would sound a little more reasonable, but would convince the man that Jonah had nothing to do with him. But the man had already turned to the head mutineer.

“If ye must do this, then put me into the shallop too,” the man said.

“What? Staffe, have you lost your mind?” the head mutineer said. “You’ve disagreed with the master near as much as the rest of us! He’s punished you for nothing—nothing!”

“But I’d trust Henry Hudson in a shallop to sail me out of here before I’d trust the rest of you to navigate this ship,” the man—Staffe?—said. “Let me take my tools and I’ll go.”

“But the master doesn’t want to sail out of here,” some of the other mutineers mocked. “He’s just going to sail around in circles looking for the Northwest Passage.”

Jonah really did wish he could remember what that was. This time the men said the words as scornfully as they might say “fairyland” or “Shangri-la”—someplace nice but completely imaginary.

“Still,” Staffe said, setting his jaw firmly. “I’m going. In a mutiny doesn’t every man make his own choice?”

There was grumbling around him, but the men operating the pulleys began raising the shallop again.

Now it was Jonah’s turn to mouth words at Katherine:
You come too! When he climbs into the shallop, you worm your way in too!

And she mouthed back, grinning,
I know! I will! Don’t worry!

Staffe stood waiting at the railing while someone went back for his “tools”—whatever that meant. It turned out it was a wooden box. When Staffe turned around to take the box, Katherine brushed past him. Staffe startled slightly; maybe Katherine’s ponytail had slapped against his cheek. But he didn’t say anything, only straightened up and looked around, a baffled expression on his face.

“Go, then, if you’re leaving,” the lead mutineer said brusquely.

By then Katherine had scrambled into the boat. She hugged Jonah, doing her best to keep away from the sailors around them. Jonah thought that the last time he’d willingly let his sister hug him, he’d been about six years old. But there was something comforting about huddling together, even as the shallop dropped lower and lower.

They landed with enough force that icy water splashed up into the boat. Only a little of it hit Jonah and Katherine, but it was enough to make Katherine start shivering violently. Jonah didn’t care how strange he would look: He spread out his cloak so it draped over Katherine, too.

“Thanks,” she whispered. “That helps.”

Fortunately, everyone else in the boat was distracted, watching the man who’d wielded the sword—John King?—maneuvering a rope so that they were still tied onto the bigger ship.

“They’ll let us back on as soon as they search for food,” one of the skeletal sailors croaked in a raspy voice that sounded as if it took his last ounce of energy. Or maybe just his last ounce of hope. “Won’t they?”

Nobody answered. By craning his neck and looking up, Jonah could tell that some of the sailors on the larger ship were unfurling the sails.

But we’re still attached, with the rope,
Jonah thought.
They can’t sail away from us.

Just then someone from the larger ship bent down and slashed a knife through the rope. The end fell into the water, causing another icy splash. And then the ship sailed away into the fog.

“We’re adrift!” one of the sailors sitting near Jonah cried. “We’re all going to die!”

The despair in his voice was horrible, like a tidal wave washing over everyone. Jonah felt his own hopes begin to ebb away.

No, no,
he thought.
This is what has to happen. What happened in original time. It’s terrible if everyone cast out into the shallop dies, but … this means that once we’re out of sight of the ship, I can stop acting like John Hudson. Our job will be done. JB can pull us out of 1611 and everything will be okay. For us, anyway. And Andrea and Brendan and Antonio …

Katherine gasped beside him.

Jonah scowled at her. How could she draw such attention to herself? Then he realized that many of the others in the shallop had gasped as well. He turned, and saw what they were all so upset about.

A huge chunk of ice was floating right toward them. Now that Jonah was down on the same level as all the ice, he could see how massive the ice chunks were. They
were practically icebergs. Even the ship probably would have been damaged if such a big ice chunk hit it.

But in the shallop …

We’re going to sink,
Jonah thought.
This is the end.

“JB!” he screamed. “Get us out of here! Now!”

Jonah kept his eyes wide open, eager for his first glimpse of a nice, safe, sterile time hollow or—better yet—his own home back in the twenty-first century. But the desolate, foggy view around him didn’t change, except that the ice slid closer and closer and closer. …

JB wasn’t going to rescue them. Maybe he couldn’t.

“Raise
our
sails!” Henry Hudson screamed. “Row toward starboard!”

Jonah felt a hand slam against the side of his head.

“I said, row!” Henry Hudson growled.

It was Katherine who thrust the handle of an oar into Jonah’s hand. Jonah glanced around and saw that John King, on the other side of the shallop, was already dipping an oar of his own into the water. And Henry Hudson and the man the others had called Staffe
were setting up sails in the middle of the boat.

So a shallop isn’t just a rowboat,
Jonah thought numbly.
It can use sails, too….

Katherine was already helping him pull on the oar, coordinating with John King’s paddling. But it was the sails that really saved them. As soon as the wind caught the first billow of cloth, the shallop lurched to the right, narrowly edging past the towering ice.

Jonah slumped against the side of the shallop in relief.

“I
am
an excellent captain!” Henry Hudson screamed out into the fog. “You had no right to banish me!”

Just in the moment that they’d spent dodging the ice, the larger ship had vanished completely. Henry Hudson’s screams echoed off the ice around them.

Banish me …

Banish me …

A hand slammed against the side of Jonah’s head once more, trapping air painfully against his ear.

Okay, I’m guessing that John Hudson and his dear old dad didn’t have the best relationship,
Jonah thought, cringing away from the man.

“Who’s this JB you were calling out to?” Henry Hudson asked suspiciously. “Some code name? Could it be? My own son plotting against me?”

“No, no,” Staffe said smoothly, holding on to the sails.
“He was merely being reverent. He said, ‘J
C
.’ Jesus Christ. Your son was beseeching the Lord for our aid. And where do you think these winds came from? His prayers were answered!”

The wind in the sails was pulling them away from the ice at an amazing speed.

Henry Hudson gazed suspiciously back and forth between Jonah and Staffe. As soon as Hudson turned his head, Staffe winked at Jonah. Then he straightened out his face into an innocent gaze as soon as Hudson’s eyes were upon him again.

So that’s how it works,
Jonah thought.
Captain Hudson’s mean to his son—er, me, for right now—but this Staffe guy protects him….

It wasn’t as good as JB protecting him by yanking him and Katherine out of time, but Jonah was glad not to be hit again.

“Sir?” John King asked, taking over the sails from Staffe. “Shall we sail toward shore, to set up camp at the winter cabin?”

Toward shore? Winter cabin? What’s he talking about?
Jonah wondered. He remembered what JB had said earlier, that the men from Hudson’s ship had had a rough winter and spring. Evidently they hadn’t stayed on the ship all that time. They’d packed up to get away from the floating ice
and the howling winds and camped out on shore.

Jonah stared at the ice floating past the shallop and reminded himself that it was June now. Summertime. If this was what June was like, he
really
didn’t want to see what it’d be like to live through January and February here.

“The winter cabin?” Hudson sneered. “Odd’s bones, man, we’re sailors, not rabbits. At least,
I
am. Henry Hudson does not cower in a hole when there are treasure routes to be found, glory to be attained …”

He’s crazy,
Jonah thought.
Totally bonkers. Has he already forgotten that he’s been thrown off his own ship in disgrace? That we’re in a glorified rowboat? In ice? Shouldn’t he be more concerned about staying alive than anything else?

“But if we go to the cabin, we can lay in supplies for next winter,” Staffe said, taking up John King’s argument. “By next spring a rescue expedition is bound to come for us—”