Elemental (15 page)

CHAPTER 28

I
didn't know what to say. It was too bizarre. Even Alice was lost for words.

“Are they . . . retreating?” asked Rose.

“Yes,” replied Alice.

“Why?”

No one answered. We should have felt relieved—pleased, even—but it made no sense. I was certain it had nothing to do with us.

“What's happening?” pressed Rose. “For days they won't cross. When they finally do, they stop halfway.”

“They didn't cross before now because they thought Roanoke Island was Plague-ridden,” I said.

Alice flashed me a glance, but Rose didn't notice. “Why would they think that?”

“Because the colony was on Hatteras. And because there's a hole in the bridge, as though people were afraid rats would cross over from Roanoke.”

“But they saw us here yesterday.”

“The Plague needs time to take effect. They didn't want to cross until they were sure it was safe.”

“How do they know it's safe now?”

Alice's eyes bored into me. The answers were right there, on her maps. Didn't Rose deserve to know the world she lived in?

Then I thought of her hands, covered in filthy bandages, and the shadows under her eyes. And Dennis, alone behind the shelter.

“The pirates gave us two days,” I began, the half truth slipping out more easily than I would have imagined. “None of us seem affected, which gives them hope. Makes them think this solution is real.”

Rose didn't respond at first. I worried that she'd seen through my hesitation and Alice's furtive glances. “You seem to have all the answers.”

“We overheard the pirates—”

“So you say. Did the pirates say why they planned to stop halfway across the bridge, by any chance?”

I shook my head.

Rose ran a finger along my sleeve. “Pity. I hate secrets.”

 * * *

Rose said we needed food, and vegetable roots weren't enough. She said she'd catch a fish or two. After all, Alice could start a fire whenever she liked now that the pirates knew where we were.

I said I'd join her to collect kindling. I hoped she'd be pleased, but she didn't seem to care.

Alice wanted to come too, so that she could inspect the bridge, try to work out what might have happened with the pirates. First, I asked her to give Griffin the journal from her dune box. If anyone could piece together the information in those pages, it was Griffin. He offered to keep an eye on Dennis too. Still, Rose said nothing.

Rose and I walked in silence. I wanted her to touch my tunic again, to make a connection between us. But she seemed distracted. It was as if she knew I'd lied to her.

“I don't know what's going to happen to Dennis,” she said finally. “His element is consuming him. It's like Griffin's visions—he doesn't control his element anymore; his element controls him.” She paused. “I don't know why I'm telling you all this. I guess I just don't want there to be any secrets between us.”

Alice pulled alongside us. I was grateful. Rose's remarks felt calculated, and I didn't know how to respond. But the farther we walked, the more it felt like a chasm separated the three of us. With every step, silence forced us apart.

When we reached the bridge, Alice headed for the gap, and Rose and I continued down to the water's edge.

“Did you see Lora die?” she asked.

The question caught me off guard. “What do you mean?”

“It's a yes-or-no question.”

“Yes. Who told you?”

“No one. You and Alice and Griffin spent half the next day asleep, so I figured you'd been awake all night. Why didn't you tell me?”

She stepped backward into the water, waiting for my reply. She didn't even bother to raise the hem of her tunic. It floated around her like a cloud.

I wanted to answer, but couldn't. Words would just confirm my guilt. But I was losing her. I had to say something. “I just . . . didn't think of it.”

She wore a distant smile. “My father coddles me, Thomas. He thinks I don't notice the things that go on in our colony. Thinks I don't know there are lies.” She drew a deep breath. When she placed her palms flat against the surface of the water, they shook. Not from fear, or from nerves, but from anger. I could see it in her rigid pose and hear it in her voice. “Do you coddle me too?”

“No.”

She drew another breath, and let the air slide between her teeth in a hiss. “I hope that's true.”

I barely recognized this version of Rose. Maybe it was sleep-deprivation, but every word had an edge that made her seem more like Alice. Only, I didn't want her to be like Alice. I wanted her to be Rose. I wanted her to be the person who saw the best in everyone.

“I'm sorry that you have to do this,” I said, waving my hand across the water. “I know the echo hurts you.”

“I don't care about the pain. I'll kill every fish in the sound if that's what it takes to keep us alive.”

Her words chilled me. I knew I ought to be collecting driftwood, but I couldn't take my eyes off her. She looked different than I'd ever seen—stronger, as though she were summoning fish rather than coaxing them.

Something in the water brushed by her, but Rose didn't move. The fish had been spared. Oddly, it didn't swim away, though. It just continued toward the shore.

Straightaway, there was another fish, and another, circling around her and leaping out of the water as if they were trying to be caught.

Still Rose didn't move.

Before I could ask if she was all right, the first fish leaped out of the water and landed beside me. It flapped about uselessly, gills opening and closing in a desperate attempt to stay alive. I stood frozen to the spot as it died slowly before me.

There were more fish now. They came suddenly, darting toward Rose, slapping against her hands. The surface of the water turned white with their splashing. But Rose didn't move, and they continued onward, sacrificing themselves on the shore.

“Rose.” I called her name, but she didn't answer. “Rose!”

She raised her head and closed her eyes. She seemed locked in place, unable to move or stop. The surface of the water was no longer visible. It shone like silver fire.

I ran into the sound, but tripped on the mass of slick bodies swarming around my legs. When I surfaced they pressed against me, furiously making their escape. I tried to forge a path through them, but I may as well have been fighting a wall. And Rose was sinking under them. She'd summoned them to her, and now they were claiming her.

“Rose!” The force of a hundred fish drove me back to the shore. “Rose!”

She didn't even struggle as her shoulders dipped below the surface; her head too. She was completely submerged. And no matter how loudly I shouted her name, she didn't respond.

Fish flew onto the shore. I held my arm up to protect myself. Through the glittering bodies I stared at the space where she'd been standing. Rose had disappeared completely, just as though she had offered to die too.

CHAPTER 29

R
ose!” I called her name, louder and louder. I tried to force my way through the wall of fish again. Failed.

There was nothing to see but a mirror-like mass of bodies fighting on the surface. They twisted and rippled like water. I couldn't even guess where Rose had gone under anymore.

Several yards away, something plummeted from the sky. It hit the water hard, shock waves scattering the fish. The swell pushed them straight to me.

Before I could work out what had happened, Alice rose from the water. She swam for a couple yards. When her feet touched the ground, she pushed toward the shore, dragging her hands beside her. Finally she stopped and ducked under. When she resurfaced, she held Rose's arm in her hands.

I forced my way back in and grabbed Rose's sleeve. Together, Alice and I pulled her onto the shore.

Rose collapsed on the ground, coughing up water. Reeds pierced her clothes, but it hardly mattered—they were ruined anyway. Once she caught her breath, she just lay there. With her eyes wide open, unblinking, she looked eerily similar to the fish dying all around her.

“What just happened?” cried Alice. She was shaking. Limping too. That's when it dawned on me what she'd just done: She'd jumped from the bridge towering over us.

I stared up at the giant arch. She'd leaped into the water beyond where Rose had been standing, but it may still have been only two yards deep. She could've killed herself.

“What happened, Rose?” Alice repeated, softer this time.

Rose swallowed hard. “I was angry. So I summoned every fish. I just wanted to be quick, get it over with. But they all came. It was like they needed to die.”

“And what about you?” I asked. “What happened to
you
?”

Rose blinked at last. “I don't know. One moment I was in control, the next . . . it felt like my element controlled me.”

Alice pulled back her right trouser leg. A gash ran across her knee and down the side of her lower leg. It was bleeding heavily.

“Thank you for saving me,” said Rose.

“You're welcome,” Alice replied. But it was me she was looking at.

 * * *

Alice carried four fish back to the shelter. She hobbled the whole way, while Rose stopped periodically to rest. My arms were laden with wood, so I couldn't help either of them.

Alice arranged the wood carefully and prepared to create fire. She had barely begun to rub her hands together before a sliver of yellow flame sliced through the air. Moments later, the kindling was ablaze. Two days before, I'd assumed she'd never conjure an open flame. Now she resembled the young girl in Griffin's picture—confidently issuing flames like it was the most ordinary thing in the world.

So what had happened in the lighthouse? She'd barely managed a single errant spark there.

“This is why the Guardians kept us away from Roanoke,” murmured Rose. “When we're here, we can make our elements do unthinkable things. But our elements can make us do unthinkable things too.”

Alice placed two fish end to end on the spit. We watched the fire growing, steam and smoke mingling as the water evaporated from the fish, and the oils in their skin seeped out.

“Did it hurt, almost drowning?” I asked.

Rose shook her head slightly. “No. I wanted it. The power I was feeling . . . it was awesome. I've never felt anything like it.” She paused. “I shouldn't have let it happen, though. When I felt the element growing, I should've pulled back. I let it consume me.”

“Why?”

“Because I was angry at you. I wanted you to see how powerful I can be. I wanted you to know that we can all have secrets. Difference is, I choose to share mine.”

She watched me, waited for me to tell her everything I knew. For a long moment, she didn't even blink. Finally, she glanced over my shoulder at Alice as if she'd found her answer there.

“You should get some sleep,” she told me.

“So should you. You spent most of the night looking after Dennis. Go on. We'll switch in a couple strikes. I promise.”

Rose stood uneasily and made her way toward the steps. When she was out of sight, Alice leaned back from the fire.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

She inspected the gash on her knee. “It'll heal.”

“Did you find anything interesting on the bridge?”

A spark returned to her eyes. “Nothing at all. Not even the planks. No one can cross that bridge anymore.”

“Where have the planks gone?”

“By the looks of it, someone moved them.”

“Who?”

“I don't know. But the pirates have been watching that bridge for two days. So it must've happened before that.”

My hand gravitated to the picture in my pocket. When I pulled it out, I looked at the woman with the cat at her heels. Perhaps the seer, my grandmother, had been even busier than we thought.

“Will the pirates get another plank?”

Alice thought about this. “I guess so. Why else would they retreat?”

The clouds were thickening behind Hatteras. Twisting. Merging. Normally there would have been lightning and thunder by now. Rain too. I almost wished the storm had been in full effect already. To see such clouds without rain and lightning felt even more threatening.

Griffin emerged from the shelter and joined us. Instinctively, I slid the picture back inside my pocket. Then I wished I hadn't. Which secrets was I keeping, and from whom? Did I even know anymore?

Griffin didn't seem to notice. He clasped both journals to his chest, and strode confidently toward me, barely a hint of his usual limp. Even Alice must have noticed, because she left the fire and joined us.

Look,
he signed before he'd even sat down. The gesture was large, like he couldn't hold it in.

He opened the journal from our father's dune box and flicked through until he found the picture of the girl with flames on her fingers.
VIRGINIA
. As before, I was struck by how old the yellowed pages looked, how strange the girl's appearance. Dennis had unearthed many clothes in Skeleton Town, but none that looked like hers.

On the reverse side of the page was the distinctive handwriting that filled the journal: tiny letters tied together with swirls and tails.

Griffin tapped the page.
Read.

It told the story of a shipwreck in the channel connecting the sound to the ocean; presumably the Oregon Inlet. The turbulent water had claimed seven men. In spite of that, the writer had pressed on to Roanoke Island in search of his family. He was convinced they were there when he saw
“a great smoke rise in the Ile Roanoke near—”

There the story ended.

I turned the page, but the words didn't follow. It made no sense. I was about to ask Griffin for an explanation when he placed Alice's open journal beside our father's.

I didn't need to read the new page twice to realize it continued mid-sentence from my father's page:

“
—
the place where I left our Colony in the year 1587, which smoke put us in good hope that some of the Colony were there expecting my return out of England
.
”

The pages had been mixed up—that much was clear. But why?

Before I could ask, Griffin pointed to a passage farther down the new page:

“. . . before we were half way between our ships and the shore we saw another great smoke to the Southwest . . . we therefore thought good to go to that second smoke first: but it was much further from the harbour where we landed, than we supposed it to be, so that we were very fore tired before we came to the smoke. But that which grieved us more was that when we came to the smoke, we found no man nor sign that any had been there lately—”

I read the pages again, one after another. When I looked up, Alice was staring at me. A part of me still wanted to believe that the colony being referred to was Skeleton Town. But I knew it wasn't.

Whoever had written this had done so long before the foundations of Skeleton Town were laid.