Trail of Bones (2 page)

“Ow!”

That came out clear enough.

“Least it ain’t yellow fever. You American?
Or you just lost?”

He’s the first one to ask me a direct
question.

“I’m—“ Before I can find out whether I’m up
to speaking a complete sentence, I’m cut off.

“Thank you, York. And you too, Mr. Floyd.
That will be enough for now.”

The man with the dark piercing eyes waves
the two of them away. I notice his buckskin jacket is a lot cleaner
than the other ones — like maybe his really did come from a costume
shop.

“I’m Eli Sands.” The words were kind of
croaked out, but like the
ow
, you could hear them.

“Well, young Master Sands. Then allow me to
introduce myself. I am Captain Meriwether Lewis. Down on the boats
somewhere is Captain William Clark. We are setting out on a journey
that is probably foolhardy or maybe even suicidal. Perhaps you are
foolhardy, as well, to be out here all alone. Or perhaps you are
some kind of omen.” He follows the word
omen
with a tiny
little smile.

The red-headed hippie in the costume comes
closer, too, staring at me the way a doctor or dentist might do
it.

“Never mind reading the will of heaven,
Captain Lewis. Perhaps there’s a simpler explanation. Perhaps the
boy is an
incognitum
.” He laughs, so maybe it’s a joke, but
I feel like my own brain universe is about to explode. An
incog
-what?

“And this,” Lewis says, nodding toward the
ponytailed redhead, “is Mr. Thomas Jefferson.”

Thomas Jefferson? Wasn’t he—?

“Mr. President! Sir!” A really sweaty man
pushes his way next to Jefferson His
Nutcracker
clothes are
more torn up, and he wears a couple extra pistols strapped to his
body. “Maybe he’s a French or British, spy, sir! Maybe the Spanish
sent him!”

“Then they’re doing a fairly poor job of
sneaking up on us, Mr. Howard. And wasn’t it your idea that we
shall not refer to me as president while we’re on this little
jaunt?”

The pistol-wearer’s eyes bulge a little
more. “Yes, Mr. President. Sorry, sir. This should remain a secret
mission.”

“This is kind of a big group to be called
‘secret.’” It’s York. I can hear other voices, and the noise of
horses and work. He’s right— there seem to be a lot of people
here.

“We’re not taking advice from some darky
slave!” Mr. Howard snaps back.

Darky slave?
York is black, it’s
true. But what kind of awful words —

Where am I? When is this?

“Stand down, Mr. Howard,” Jefferson
says.

“But he just contradicted—“

“I said, ‘Stand down.’ Stop shouting at the
less fortunate. I’m sure this journey shall stay secret. After all,
it’s not as if news of the president’s travels can fly through thin
air.”

It’s time for me to shake out all the
grogginess and find out where I am.

“Um, sir—“

Instead, I throw up. One of those
empty-stomach throw-ups that are sometimes the worse.

“The boy’s sick.”

Don’t ever let anyone tell you that time
travel is easy.

“Maybe we better take him to St. Louis,” the
one named Floyd says.

“Portents and omens, sir,” Lewis says to
Jefferson.

“Let us take him to my camp, first,”
Jefferson says. “ It’s closer, and Sally can look after him.”

I don’t want to be
looked after
. I
just want to go home.

I’m handed a rag for my mouth.

“Drink this.” Floyd holds out some kind of
wooden cup. He decides to help me and tips the liquid into my
lips.

Whatever it is — medicine? — it stings and
burns, and I start coughing, so thanks to being “helped,” I never
get the word
no
out of my mouth, as in “No, I don’t want to
go, I want to stay here and look for my friends—”

But now I’m being led away, my arm around
Floyd’s shoulder, and he’s taking me toward some kind of wooden
wagon.

“Up here, little friend.”

I’m still not sure where I am, but I’ll take
the ride, so I let him help me up.

I climb on, and in the rear of the wagon, I
see a blanket in the corner that’s been thrown over some stuff, so
I take it and pull it off.

There’s a giant bone underneath it.

Like a dinosaur bone.

Like a bigger-than-Clyne dinosaur bone.

I’m shivering, but I don’t put the blanket
on.

“Master Sands?” Two men are walkin toward
the wagon. At least I hope it’s two — maybe I’m seeing double. It
looks like Jefferson has split into two separate lanky red-headed
men.

Except the other one doesn’t have a
ponytail.

“Are you brothers?” I finally manage to
croak out.

Jefferson laughs and turns to the other guy.
“Sometimes, Captain Clark, you’d think we were the only two
red-haired men in creation, the way people keep asking that. No,
young sir,”— and now he’s looking at me again— “this is Captain
William Clark, the other leader of this noble, somewhat secret,
perhaps misbegotten, expedition. You should put the blanket on,
Master Sands. I’m sure the bony remains of the
incognitum
won’t miss it.”

“Before you return to camp, Mr. President,
here’s the other find you inquired about — the strange hat we found
by the riverbank.” Clark lifts a sword — a sword! (but it’s smaller
than Excalibur, and obviously someone besides King Arthur and Thea
can hold this one)— and hanging off the tip is my Seals cap.

I grab for the cap without thinking. Without
the ship, it’s my only chance to get home, and maybe to find my
friends.

“Perhaps it belongs to the boy?” Clark asks.
Yeah, perhaps it does.

Jefferson takes it from the sword tip to
look at it, then drops it as if he’s been burned. He squats down to
study it. “I should hope not. He’d scald himself. You have found
the first scientific anomaly of your long journey, Mr. Clark. An
entirely different kind of
incognitum
— a mysterious type of
half hat, with lettering on it.” he says, pointing to the
overlapping
S
and
F
.

That weird word again. What is this
incognitum
that Jefferson is so worked up about?

“You and your
incognitums
, sir.”
Clark shakes his head. “I appreciate your accompanying us all the
way through Missouri in order to look for large and mysterious
bones, but let’s not terrify the men any more than we have to.”
Clark pats the bone laying near me on the wagon.

“Dinosaur bone “ I tell them, getting a
couple more words out of my mouth.

“What?”

“From a
dinosaur
. But not the one who
does homework. Luckily.”

Clark looks at Jefferson and shrugs. “I
don’t know what he’s saying. Maybe he
is
from another
country.”

“
Dinosaur
.” Jefferson repeats the
word. “It’s some kind of Latin I’ve never heard before.”

“Hat.”

“What?”

“Hat,” I repeat.

I want my Seals cap. Still feeling shaky I
start to reach for it again, thinking I’ll climb down from the
wagon.

But before I can, I’m jerked back in as the
horse the wagon’s hitched to starts to move.

“Let Sally tend him!” Jefferson says to the
driver of the wagon. “Later, when he’s regained his strength, we
shall find out how our young squire came to be by the banks of the
Ohio River this sunny day in May!”

I’m shivering and still feeling sick, and
this time I take the blanket completely off the dinosaur bone and
wrap it around myself.

The wagon pulls me along, farther and
farther away from the baseball cap that’s my only real ticket
home.

Chapter Two

Thea: Runaway

May 1804

I’m still not sure where I am, but wherever
it is, they keep telling me I am a slave. That, at least, is the
translation courtesy of the lingo-spot behind my ear. And
slave
, unfortunately, is one of those words with few
alternate meanings.

There was a blackout period after the lizard
man K’lion’s ship seemed to come alive and spin out of control on
our way back from seeing the wizard Merlin, and his king, Arthur,
and saving the king’s cursed-and-weighty blade, Excalibur. The
three of us were then separated as we were flung through the Fifth
Dimension

But Eli is here now. I have seen him.

They brought him into camp a short while
ago. He appears to be sick.

I wonder if they told him that he’s a slave,
too?

I haven’t been able to get near him, to ask
him any questions. But at least we’ve been pulled toward the same
place, the same moment in time.

But which moment? And is our lizard friend
nearby?

After the blackout, I awoke in a fairly
dense stand of trees, clothing torn, my skin scratched. Working my
way through the trees, toward the sound of water, I soon came to a
road, or broad path, that appeared to follow the course of a great
river.

I drank from the river, cleaned myself as
best I could, and eventually heard a group of travelers
approaching.

I spied them from the safety of the trees.
Since it was a mixed company, both men and women, I decided to show
myself.

“Help! Please.”

I said it in Latin first. If this was indeed
the same Earth that Eli and I know, the Roman language is the most
common tongue. At least, it was when I lived there.

“Halt.”

The speaker was a tall man, with red hair,
and somewhat stern, though lively, features. He was riding on a
horse. His name, I quickly learned, was Jefferson.

With his raised hand, the horses and pair of
wagons behind him pulled to a stop.

Another man, Howard, rode up on another
steed, and eyed me intensely. “Sir,” he said. “I believe that’s
her.”

“Who?”

“The escaped slave from New Orleans. The one
whose likeness is featured in all the handbills. Brassy.”

Without waiting for a reply, Howard jumped
off his horse and grabbed me. “You’re coming with us, girl. We’ll
get you back to your rightful master!”

“Mr. Howard—“

“I have no master!” I used Latin again. The
tall redhead looked at me curiously.

The one called Howard was squeezing my
wrists. I was getting ready to kick him

“Mr.
Howard
—“

“What?
Ow
!” I delivered the blow, but
still he held me.

“She speaks Latin.”

“It makes no difference, sir. —Stop that! —
Whether she’s an over-educated house-slave — Ow! Be still! — or a
field hand, we must return her. She belongs to the governor of your
new territory, sir! You’re the president of the United States! You
cannot be perceived as helping runaway slaves! —
Ow
!”

Jefferson looked away. He appeared to be
embarrassed.

“She’s just a Negro, sir. A darky. She’s no
business of the president’s.”

“No. She is some business of the
president’s, Mr. Howard. But what sort? That is what we grapple
with.”

A woman who appeared to be Nubian, or an
Ethiop, from the very heart of Africa, sat on top of the largest
wagon — a kind of chariot with inner seating and doors — holding
the reins of the horses. She stared down at the men. Her eyes were
ablaze, but she said nothing.

Jefferson’s eyes stayed averted, but he
spoke. “And when did you switch from worrying about my security to
worrying about politics?”

“Sir — stop that, young wench, or I’ll lash
you myself! — one should not try to separate security and
politics.”

Jefferson sighed, finally turning back to
face us. He seemed wearier.

“No shackles, at least, Mr. Howard. Not for
a young girl like that. We’ll bring her with us.”

Thus was I mistaken for someone’s slave.
Even after pointing out that
I
approached
them
. I
spoke in Latin, and Jefferson translated for his assistant,
Howard.

“A ruse,” Howard called it. Jefferson was
again silent. And so they believe — or wish — me to be an escapee
named Brassy.

There were slaves in Alexandria, though
mother and I certainly never kept any at the library. But many of
the wealthier families had them. Mother argued against the idea of
slavery, in a lecture, once. Another reason a lot of people hated
her.

In Alexandria, slavery was a function of
economics — or a failure of it. People would often sell themselves
as slaves if they had no other means of support.

But usually it’s about more than just money.
Like at Peenemünde, the rocket factory of the Third Reich, where
K’lion and I were taken prisoner during our search for Eli.

Where we met the escapees, who risked death
on their own terms rather than die making implements of war. Where
I gave the woman Hannah the
sklaan
— the warmth-giving cloth—
from Clyne’s planet

There, the slavery was about power. Who had
it all, and who didn’t have any.

Was I going to be taken to another rocket
factory?

“Come on, little cocoa bean.”

“I am
not
a ‘little cocoa bean!’”

The man Howard was hauling me over to the
horse-drawn wagon where the African woman sat. “Please be careful,
Mr. Howard,” Jefferson said. “Her Latin, after all, is better than
yours.”

Mr. Howard didn’t think that was funny.

“I’ve got her now, Howard,” the Nubian said.
Was she some kind of visiting dignitary, to address the man so
casually? “You go on back to making the world safe for the
president.”

She took my hand and pulled me up next to
her.

“Afternoon, young lady. My name’s Sally
Hemings. What’s yours?”

I want to see Eli. They took him off a
wagon, but he didn’t seem fully awake. I don’t where— or how— they
found him, but he didn’t appear well. Sally was summoned to help
tend him. I want to follow, but some of the Centurions, the
soldiers, are blocking my way to his tent.