Trail of Bones (19 page)

“
Sacre bleu!
” Banglees yells. He
grabs the long guide pole from Sally and is about to use it to
thwack Clyne. “I am not frozen anymore! And you don’t belong in New
Orleans!”

“A good time to meet,
mon-ami
man!
Can I not swim along?” Clyne asks. “Jumping ligaments still
ck-ck-ck!
sore. Swim muscles unused for many time clicks.”
He does a kind of sidestroke alongside us. “Feels both tumbly and
nice.”

While he swims, Clyne explains the “prime
nexus” theory to us: In any universe, at any time, there are
prime-nexus moments — like crossroads, where all history that
follows is changed, no matter what.

“But doesn’t everything we do affect
history, no matter how small?” Sally asks.

“Yes, always —
sssh glgg!
” Clyne
accidentally swallows some water in mid-agreement. He comes up,
treading water, spouting the water back out of his mouth, like a
living fountain. “Hmm. Slightly brackish. But intriguing.” Then he
swims close to the boat again. “Think of it like rocks being thrown
in this water. Different sizes make different splashes, different
size circles. And some moments cast
skkkt!
bigger circles
than others. The moments that change the most
tk tk!
things
for the greatest number of life forms — those are prime
skw!
nexus moments. They have energy. They draw things toward
pt!
them. That may be why we are swimming in this dark
tk tk
cht!
canal together.”

“Um, Clyne,” I tell him. “You’re the only
one who’s swimming.”

“I really had convinced myself it was an ice
dream, from being frozen.” Banglees shakes his head. “
Mon
Dieu.
”

Thea, Sally, and I get busy trying to figure
out what the prime nexus might be. This trip has had so many of
them: Lewis and Clark’s whole journey, which changed all the
history that came after, Thea meeting the president, even Jefferson
digging up bones and discovering the past. All of it had an
effect.

Has.

“What about him?” I point to Banglees. “Does
he have anything to do with this?”

“I was not working for history,” Banglees
says to me, attempting to explain something. “I was working for
money.”

Banglees, Sally tells me, is involved in
helping runaway slaves find something called “the doorway.”

For a price.

“What’s ‘the doorway’?” I ask.

“That’s what I want to find out. That’s why
we’re headed to the lake.”

“What lake?”

“Lake Pontchartrain,” Banglees adds
helpfully. “If we ever get there,” he adds. Less helpfully.

“It ees very dangerous!” he says, to no one
in particular. “Zat ees why I must charge!”

“What does this doorway do?”

“It makes people… disappear.”

“Like my hat,” I say. And then touch the top
of my head. Why am I worried about getting to the lake? I’m still
not sure how we’re going to get back home.

“Sally — Ms. Hemings — when you were at
Thomas Jefferson’s, did you happen to see—”

“I lost your hat, Eli.” It’s Thea. Looking
right at me with her big brown eyes. “I haven’t had a chance to
tell you everything yet. I lived in Jefferson’s house, as a
slave.”

She’s speaking low, in Greek, I think,
letting the lingo-spot translate for her. Banglees is casually
trying to listen in.

“What!?”

“I can tell you more, later. Your soft
helmet— Jefferson had it. I tried it on, hoping we could all use it
to go back. But then it was taken from me. I’m sorry.” And now her
eyes aren’t looking at me at all.

My time-travel hat. With the Joe DiMaggio
autograph. Gone.

“You… you wore it, Thea? Did you go back?
What happened?”

Before she can tell me, Banglees spits out
an urgent
shhhh!
and pulls the boat alongside another of the
low, mossy branches.

“What is it?” Sally asks.

“A noise zat doesn’t belong here. Shh.
Shh.”

There’s a distant boom of thunder, but
that’s not what he means. There’s the splash-splashing of Clyne,
swimming up ahead.

“Cannot zat creature be si
lent
?”
Banglees hisses. He’s hearing something else.

“I don’t know what happened, exactly,” Thea
whispers, continuing. “I went back for a little while… I saw your
father.”

“You did? Is he all right?”

“I’m not sure. He needs you. He needs your
mother.”

“How long were you there?”

“You people would make terrible trackers!
Shh!
” Banglees is getting more impatient. He ties up his
boat to the branch and hops out. “Something ees following us.” He
walks along the bank of the canal, balancing himself, not making a
sound.

He’s pretty good. Almost like a wolf.

“Eli… I’m not even sure how long I was
gone.” Thea’s still whispering. “But I’ve been back a long time.
Worrying about you, and K’lion, for all the seasons we were
separated.”

She pauses suddenly, then says, “By the
gods, Eli. I believe I’ve had… a nativity day.”

“You’ve had a what?”

She tries it in English. “My native…day. Of
borning. My day of borning.”

“A birthday, child. She’s telling you she’s
had a birthday.” Sally was a better, quieter eavesdropper than
Banglees.

“Happy birthday, Thea,” I say. “How old are
you?”

“Fourteen summers, now.”

Then I stop and realize I’ve been here for
months, too. I’ve been traveling with the Corps. This is the
longest I’ve been away since coming unstuck in time in the first
place.

“Thea… I think I’ve had a birthday, too.
Last August. Around the time Kentuck died.”

“Who?

“A friend. I wasn’t even thinking about
birthdays, then. I guess I’ve had thirteen summers. I still haven’t
caught up with you.”

“Happy… birthday… Eli.” She sticks with
English so I don’t have to wait for the lingo-spot. A bolt of
lightning rips through the sky, and everything’s a bright brilliant
blue for a moment. Thea’s looking at me like she doesn’t know what
to say next.

And then she leans over and kisses me.

It’s a cheek kiss, mostly, sort of, I think.
And it’s fast. And I can feel a deep burning red wash over my face,
all the way to the tips of my ears.

“I am glad K’lion is safe. And you, too,”
she says quickly. Still in English.

Sally is humming to herself. Her smile’s
just grown, and then she sees me looking at her, mostly because I’m
not sure where else to look at the moment.

“Where is that man?” she asks, helping me to
change the subject.

Boom.
Thunder follows the lightning
boat.

“You!” I hear a voice shout, also in
English.

“A good time to meet!” Clyne shouts
back.

There’s splashing, and what sounds like
fighting —
“Zut alors!”
— and Sally doesn’t waste any time.
She grabs the guide pole, unties the rope, and pushes us into the
canal toward the scuffle a few yards away.

“Who’s there? Who’s there?” Sally
shouts.

It’s dark, but there’s just enough moonlight
to recognize who Banglees is fighting with. It’s Mr. Howe. And
Banglees is about to cut him with a knife.

Chapter
Twenty-one

Eli: Lake Pontchartrain

February 1805

“Don’t hurt him,” I say to Banglees, nearly
falling over as I step out of the boat.

“Why not? I think he ees a bounty hunter. He
will turn us in.” With his other arm, he has Mr. Howe in a grip by
the neck.

“Why do you think that?”

“Because I use to be one! I know!”

I move closer. “No. I know him.”

Banglees looks at me, looks at Howe, then
releases him. He doesn’t sheath the knife right away.

Howe tries to brush himself off. “What are
you
doing here?” I ask him.

His clothes are torn and muddy, and soon he
gives up the idea of trying to clean himself off.

“Are you really here?” Howe asks. “Or is
this some other part of the test?”

Back toward New Orleans, a lone rocket
explodes in the sky.

“We are all really here. Some tracker.”
Banglees spits.

“You know who he is?” Sally asks, coming up
behind me.

“I do.”

“It feels like I’ve been here for months,”
Howe tells me. I squint at him. The dark covers him with shadows,
but I can tell that besides being dirty, there are whiskers all
over his face and he’s lost weight.

“It looks like you have.”

“Eli?” Thea’s there when I turn. She’s
shivering, and not from the cold. “Eli… it’s my fault. I did this.
I brought him here.”

“How?”

“When I was — when I had your soft helmet
on. I was turned into a kind of ghost. I didn’t fully…
materialize
…in your world. That’s when I saw your father.
That’s when I saw
him
.” She points to Howe.

“How did he get back here?”

“We were tangled up, fighting. He was caught
in my… presence.”

“You mean — you were a kind of time-sphere
yourself?”

Thea nods, then shrugs. “I’m not sure. I
felt someone with me when I was taken back here, as I moved through
the dimensions. But I arrived alone.”

“I have to ask Clyne if that’s possible. If
I—” I look around. No dinosaur. “Clyne?” And no answer.
“Clyne?”

“I think he went on.” Sally nods in the
direction ahead of us.

“Are we close to this lake?”

“
Uuuuuf!
”

The question was for Banglees, who doesn’t
answer, because he’s just been shoved by Mr. Howe who sprints past
him, quickly disappearing in the dark.

“Come back ’ere!” Banglees yells, running
after him.

“We’ve got to get to the lake,” Sally
insists. “We have to warn them.”

“Warn who?” I ask.

“Any slaves there, trying to escape.
Jefferson told me of the plans. Governor Claiborne’s headed there,
to find this ‘doorway,’ too. He wants to make an example of the
slaves and end this runaway business. Jefferson may not be the most
enlightened man, but he wants to prevent a massacre. Only, as
president, he can’t do it, officially. So it’s up to me. And the
two of you.”

So we climb back into the boat, and Sally
and Thea and I take turns with the pole, pushing and steering our
way toward the lake.

And during my turn piloting the boat, I
realize that in my months with the Corps, I’ve grown. My body’s
gotten bigger. My arms are stronger. I’m changing.

But then we get to the lake, and all the
thoughts about how long we’ve been here in this time, or how glad I
am that Thea and Clyne and I are together, all those thoughts
disappear in one huge thunderclap of surprise.

You’d think the surprise would be that the
governor’s troops were already there —a whole group of men, some of
them soldiers, some who looked like farmers. Most of them brought
rifles and fire. They brought dogs with them, too. Bloodhounds, I
guess. Used for tracking.

And they had a bunch of people lined up,
black people, sitting on their knees. They were all in costumes, or
parts of costumes — wings and masks and papier-mâché animal heads —
like they’d just come from a big party.

Didn’t Sally say it was carnival time?

But none of this is fun; none of this was
celebrating anything. They all have their hands behind their backs
— men, women, children — and they’re weeping.

You’d think all of that would be the biggest
surprise, the biggest shock, but it isn’t.

The biggest surprise of all is seeing
Clyne’s ship.

It’s kind of wedged between two gnarled oak
trees, pulsing, emitting a steady, low glow, and looking a little
like—it’s melting.

“The doorway,” Sally said. “That must be
it.”

She meant Clyne’s ship.

“Nexus watch! Careful!” I hear Clyne but
don’t see him right away in the all the shadows. Then a torch
emerges from between the oak trees, near the ship. The light
briefly touches on one of the dogs, who’s digging furiously in the
mud.

The light also shows Clyne with chains on
his wrist. He’s being led by one of the soldiers, one of the guys
in an actual uniform. He holds up the torch directly in front of
Clyne’s face.

“Get that costume off now, boy!” He tugs at
Clyne’s head.

“Ouch! Grab-twisting is not called for!”

“Don’t talk to me. Don’t try to fool me.”
Frustrated, the man turns away from Clyne, and toward us. He seems
familiar.

“Howard!” Thea gasps. “Jefferson’s
guard.”

“Sure enough,” Sally says. “It’s Mr. Howard.
I better get over there and talk sense to him before someone gets
hurt really bad.”

“No!” Thea says. In English.

“We have to keep him from doing something
stupid to those people,” Sally says.

Know.

“No what?” I ask. But I’m not sure if that
was Thea or Sally. And my lingo-spot is itching like crazy.

“No,” Thea says. “Not again. It’s just like
Tiberius.” The gang of men, the torch light — it reminds her of
what happened in Alexandria, to her and her mother. She’s having
that thing that people who’ve been through war get — a memory
throwback. A flashback. Whatever it’s called.

“No.”

Know.

“
No
,” I tell her again. “This is not
like Alexandria. We’ll be all right.” I hold her. I don’t want her
to run and get hurt by the dogs. “It will be all right.”

“It’s always men with fire,” she whispers to
me.

“Yes,” I agree. And soon we are surrounded,
clamped into chains, and there’s nowhere left to go.

Chapter
Twenty-two

Clyne: Prime
Nexus

February 1805

Perhaps it’s too soon to think of abandoning
my studies and becoming an Earth outlaw. We have found the prime
nexus.