Torn Read online

“What the …,” Jonah muttered.

  He pulled himself together enough to sit up and look toward the handle end of the club. A cruel-faced sailor was holding on to it with filthy, infected-looking hands.

  The sailor wasn’t moving either.

  Looking around—more leisurely now—Jonah realized that John Hudson’s tracer was frozen in place as well, sprawled across the deck in the exact spot where Jonah had been only seconds before. The tracer seemed completely unaware of the man above him. And his head was directly below the club, the perfect target.

  The tracer wasn’t moving at all, not even with the rolling of the ship.

  For that matter the ship wasn’t rolling anymore, either. It was also frozen in place, at the peak of a swell lifting its right side up and plunging its left side down.

  “So, JB,” Jonah said, calmly taking the Elucidator out of his cloak. “Why’d you decide to freeze time?”

  “I’ve got to stop Katherine from screaming over every little thing,” JB complained from the Elucidator. “Or else—”

  “Little?” Katherine shrieked, darting out from behind the club-wielding sailor. “Jonah, that man was going to kill you!”

  Jonah saw that she’d been tugging on the sailor’s arms, trying to hold them back.

  “Bulletproof! Stabproof!” Katherine sputtered. She grabbed the Elucidator out of her brother’s hands and yelled directly at it. “You made it sound like Jonah was going to be safe! How’s a lousy costume supposed to protect him against being clubbed to death?”

  “Katherine,” JB said. “Jonah. Look at the man holding that club.”

  Jonah looked.

  The only thing Jonah had noticed before was the filth and the cruel expression. Now he studied the sailor’s face: the eyes even more sunken than the tracer’s, the cheeks pitted with sores, the cheekbones and chin jutting out sharply, as though they could break right through the papery skin.

  “I’ve seen skeletons in better health,” JB said. “He can barely even lift that club.”

  It was true: Even frozen in place, the man’s arms looked as though they’d been trembling with the exertion of holding the club in the air.

  “He couldn’t have really hurt Jonah,” JB said. “But John Hudson—the tracer—he isn’t in very good shape himself. One little tap, and he would have been out of the action until he’s on the rowboat.”

  “So I’m supposed to go through a whole mutiny pretending to be unconscious?” Jonah asked. Sure, he’d been worried about what he was supposed to do and say. But wasn’t this a little … insulting? “Couldn’t you just have used a dummy to play this role, and left me out of it?”

  “Wouldn’t have worked,” JB said, the tension back in his voice. “There wasn’t time; we didn’t have enough control….” Jonah felt an icy blast of air, and the ship lurched slightly to the left, before locking into position again, still seriously tilted. “Hurry! I can only hold this for so long! Jonah, get back into place!”

  Jonah shot a glance at his sister. Generally Jonah was a pretty obedient kid. Life was easier that way, he thought. Spend two minutes taking the trash out to the curb, and then you didn’t have to listen to a forty-five minute lecture about how “everyone in the family has responsibilities; everyone has to pull his own weight” and “Jonah, we’re just trying to prepare you for adulthood, when you’ll have to take care of yourself and other people too….” And on and on and on.

  But Jonah had also always been around grown-ups—parents, teachers, coaches—who were big on explaining everything. “The reason you have to clean your room is …” “You have to show all your work on that math problem because …” “If you pass the ball instead of trying to take the shot on goal yourself, then …”

  Jonah wanted to yank Katherine aside—was there a way to doubly pull someone out of time? He wanted to be able to confer with her privately, somewhere JB couldn’t hear them. What if obeying JB was a really, really bad idea? What if they couldn’t trust JB after all? What if he was lying? Should Jonah and Katherine be staging a mutiny of their own?

  Jonah tried to convey all of those questions in one quick glance. He didn’t know if Katherine understood any of them, but she scrunched up her face into an agonized expression.

  Then she shoved the Elucidator back into his cloak and muttered, “Go ahead. I’ll watch out for you.”

  Jonah thought about throwing back a sarcastic comment like, You and what army? You’re barely five feet tall! And do you even weigh eighty-five pounds? But really, she probably was strong enough to overpower the skeletal sailor.

  Cautiously, Jonah lay down on the deck, awkwardly trying to fit his body into the space occupied by the tracer. At the last minute he turned his head back, defiantly. Maybe he was stupid enough to let himself be hit in the head by a club, but he wasn’t going to do it blindly.

  Wham!

  The club slammed into Jonah’s forehead. Jonah reeled back.

  Okay, maybe the sailor wasn’t strong enough to swing that very hard himself, Jonah thought. But … gravity! Wasn’t anybody thinking about how gravity would pull the club down? That was a hard hit!

  Automatically Jonah lifted his hand to his head, to rub the sore spot.

  “Jonah, you had better pretend you conked out, just like the tracer, or else he’ll hit you again,” JB whispered, very, very softly.

  Jonah dropped his hand and let his body go limp.

  “Jonah!” Jonah heard Katherine wail, as she flung herself down to crouch over him.

  The sailor who’d hit Jonah had to have heard her too.

  “Witchcraft? Bedevilment?” he muttered in a frightened voice.

  Jonah opened one eye just a crack, just enough to see the sailor looking side to side, his eyes bulging in terror.

  “Katherine, shut up! Jonah’s fine! He’s just acting, the way he’s supposed to,” JB hissed, again so softly that Jonah was fairly sure the sound couldn’t travel up to the sailor’s ears.

  Jonah couldn’t see what Katherine was doing, but the sailor shrugged, as if deciding he had other things to worry about than devils and witches.

  “I found the pup,” the sailor called down into the hold. “I gave ’im what was coming for ’im, I did.”

  As far as Jonah could tell, nobody answered. But the sailor began tugging on Jonah’s legs, pulling him toward the side of the ship.

  If he lifts me up like he’s about to toss me overboard, I am not lying still for that, Jonah thought. I don’t care what JB wants me to do.

  It was hard enough lying still while being dragged. The sheen of ice on the rough deck probably made Jonah’s body slide more smoothly, but it stung the bare skin of his face.

  So much for the protective mask, Jonah thought. He didn’t want to think the next thought, but it came anyway: What if there isn’t a protective mask? What if it’s just ordinary makeup?

  The sailor stopped tugging on Jonah’s feet—now he was wrapping a rough rope around Jonah’s ankles, looping the rope around Jonah’s wrists, and tying all of them together. Then he shoved Jonah’s body into the dim area behind a row of barrels.

  “And that’s where you’ll stay,” the sailor muttered. “Cur!”

  A big watery blob hit Jonah’s cheek.

  One huge droplet from a melting icicle? Jonah wondered. Spray splashing in from the sea?

  “Jonah!” Katherine’s urgent whisper sounded right beside Jonah’s ear. “That man just spit on you!”

  “Eww, sick!” Jonah barely remembered that he had to whisper, barely remembered to open his eye halfway and make sure that the sailor had turned away before Jonah brought his hand up to his face and rubbed away the spittle. Because his wrists and ankles were tied together, he had to jerk his feet up at the same time.

  “Loosen the rope, will you?” he asked Katherine. “Just in case …”

  Katherine bent near him, picking at the knots.

  “Ow—broke a fingernail,” she muttered, with an exaggerated pout.

  “You’ll
live,” Jonah muttered back.

  “Shh!” JB hissed at both of them. “Don’t change anything!”

  Katherine paused for a second, glared down at the spot in Jonah’s cloak where he’d tucked the Elucidator, and then went back to picking at the knots.

  “Nobody’s going to know,” she muttered. “And this way, we’ll be able to protect ourselves if we have to.”

  She pulled the end of the rope back. Jonah spread his wrists and ankles apart, making room to slip the ropes off if he had to.

  Footsteps sounded on the other side of the barrels, and Jonah shut his eyes and let his head loll back, just in case.

  “Okay, they went on past,” Katherine whispered. “There’s a group of them, going up to that door where the tracer was afraid to knock …”

  She fell silent.

  “What’s happening now?”

  “They’re trying to decide who’s going to knock—wait, I think one of them just volunteered. …” She drew in a sharp breath. “No, they’re going to fight about it.”

  It was maddening, lying there waiting for Katherine’s descriptions. Jonah sat up—his head woozy and throbbing—and peeked around the side of the barrel.

  The fight seemed to be happening in slow motion. One man shoved another; a third man drew back his fist to punch the first. But the potential puncher seemed to have balance problems—just the action of moving his fist was enough to topple him over backward. He landed with a thunk on the deck and lay there blinking up at the sky, as if wondering what hit him.

  Jonah choked back laughter.

  “Jonah, shh, they’ll hear you,” Katherine hissed. “And get down, before someone sees you! The door’s opening.”

  Jonah crouched down but kept his head up, watching.

  The handful of sailors who hadn’t ended up flat on the ground were standing back from the door. They twisted their hands; they glanced nervously at one another.

  The man closest to the door pulled out a gun.

  “Um, JB?” Katherine whispered. “I know you said Jonah’s safe because his costume is bulletproof, but what about me? If that man shoots his gun over in this direction—”

  “He’s not going to,” JB whispered back.

  “Maybe you should crouch down behind the barrel a little more,” Jonah whispered.

  Katherine hunkered down, almost on top of Jonah. Both of them peered around the barrel.

  The door had swung all the way open now. A man stood in the doorway, calmly regarding the gun.

  “So it’s come to this,” he said.

  Jonah could see the gun shaking in the other man’s hand.

  “M-master, you leave us no choice,” he said. “To avoid an icy grave we must sail for home now, whilst we can, whilst it still be summer.”

  Summer? Jonah thought. This is summer?

  “JB, are you sure we aren’t at the North Pole?” he muttered.

  JB didn’t answer.

  Neither did the “master” in the doorway.

  “Bind his hands!” the man with the gun cried.

  Two of the other sailors stepped forward with ropes.

  The man standing in the doorway held his wrists out, as if he didn’t care what the others did.

  “So the glory of discovery will be mine alone,” he said. “Long after you are dead and forgotten, people will praise my name as they sail the Hudson Passage!”

  Katherine drove her elbow into Jonah’s back.

  “That must be Henry Hudson!” she whispered.

  “I’m not an idiot!” Jonah whispered back. He really wanted to ask, Is there a Hudson Passage somewhere? Is he right? But, well, he didn’t want to look like an idiot.

  “Won’t be no ‘Hudson Passage,’” the man with the gun said. “We’re sailing for home.”

  “’C-cause, you just want to drive us all to our deaths, looking for something that isn’t there,” one of the other men said.

  He looked around at his buddies for agreement.

  They nodded, and shuffled forward menacingly.

  Hudson didn’t step back.

  “You’ve lost your faith,” he said. “Now? Just when I’ve found out—” He broke off, and stared coldly out at the assembled men. “No, no, it’s not worth discussing with the faithless.”

  Jonah couldn’t help being impressed that Hudson seemed so calm. Either he was crazy or really, really brave.

  Or maybe he’s blind? Jonah thought. Doesn’t he see that gun?

  The man with the gun lowered it.

  “How could you have found out anything?” he asked. “We’ve been trapped in the ice since Monday. Trapped in ice in June!”

  “I am a brilliant sea captain,” Hudson said airily. “I read the winds. I read the waves. I see things no other man could.”

  Now the other men looked at each other nervously. Some in the back—the ones who’d fallen on the deck—were whispering together.

  The man with the gun glared at the whisperers, then aimed the gun more precisely at Hudson.

  “Do you see that you’re not the captain anymore?” he asked.

  Hudson looked directly at him for the first time.

  “I see that you will hang for mutiny,” he said. “You, and anyone who joins you.”

  This set off more whispering.

  “We’ll say you died a natural death,” the man with the gun said. “We’ll swear an oath together—nobody will speak the word mutiny. Nobody will ever know.”

  Hudson’s head shot up.

  “You’ll say you left me in the shallop,” he said. “At my request.”

  “Shallop?” Jonah whispered. “What’s that?”

  “It’s the rowboat,” JB whispered back.” Or—kind of like one.”

  “He’s asking to be put out in a rowboat?” Jonah asked. “In ice?”

  “It beats being shot,” Katherine said in a shaky voice.

  “Would you deny an old sea captain his last wish?” Hudson pressed.

  Now the man with the gun stepped back to whisper with the others.

  Jonah caught bits and pieces of the argument, because the sailors weren’t very good at keeping their voices low.

  “But what if we need the shallop to go out fishing?” one sailor moaned.

  “Will this make us more or less likely to hang?” another yelped.

  Finally the man with the gun stepped back toward Hudson.

  “Fine,” he said. “You get the shallop. And any man crazy enough to follow you.” He nudged Hudson’s chest with the gun. “We get to keep the food you’ve been hiding.”

  “Wait—there’s not going to be any food in the rowboat, either?” Jonah asked.

  “Jonah—shh!” JB hissed.

  “Go get the others,” the man with the gun muttered to the sailors beside him. Two broke off from the group and scurried down the stairs—Jonah had to admire the way they could walk so quickly even on the rolling ship.

  A few minutes later the men reappeared, carrying or prodding along a small group of even more sick-looking sailors.

  “Are those corpses?” Katherine asked. “Are they going to send Hudson out in a rowboat with a bunch of dead bodies?”

  “No, they’re not dead … yet,” JB whispered grimly. “Just very, very close. Hudson’s going to be out in a rowboat in the ice with a bunch of dying sailors.”

  Katherine sank down to the floor, sliding away from Jonah. She wasn’t trying to peek around the barrels anymore. She stared unseeingly at the dark wood of the cask before her.

  “I don’t get it,” she said. “Okay, sure, the sailors are mad at Henry Hudson because they’re ready to go home and he’s not. But those other guys are already dying. You don’t put dying people out in a rowboat in ice. You tuck them into bed and feed them, I don’t know, chicken noodle soup.”

  “When no one’s seen a chicken since they left England more than a year ago?” JB asked her. “When every bite that crosses a dying man’s lips is food that the others can’t have? When every man on this ship is al
ready scared he’s going to starve to death?”

  Jonah shivered. He wasn’t sure if it was because of the cold or because JB’s words were so harsh. This ship was an awful place. It would be cold and brutal and nasty even if they weren’t floating through ice.

  Jonah poked at John Hudson’s unconscious tracer.

  “Hey, dude,” he whispered. “Don’t you want to wake up and be a hero? Fight back for your dad and all those dying sailors?”

  But of course Jonah’s hand slipped right through the tracer.

  Katherine turned her head toward her brother.

  “Jonah?” she said. “Do you think—”

  She broke off, because the sailors were screaming on the other side of the barrel now.

  “Watch out!”

  “No, no, don’t—”

  “He’s got a sword!”

  Jonah sprang up to watch.

  “Stay out of sight!” JB ordered.

  “Oh, sorry,” Jonah muttered, crouching slightly so his eyes would barely show above the top of the barrel. He expected JB to complain about that, too, but the Elucidator was silent.

  Jonah eagerly turned his gaze toward Henry Hudson. Hudson had been talking a few moments ago about being an old sea captain, but maybe that was just a bluff. Maybe he was really youthful and athletic and agile—and good with a sword. Maybe he’d had one hidden in his sleeve. He could have used it to slash the ropes binding his wrists, then flicked the tip of the sword against the gun, swinging it out of the other man’s grasp. Stuff like that happened all the time in the movies. Jonah hoped he’d sprung up in time to see some really fancy moves, like Henry Hudson spinning the gun around the tip of the sword a few times before flinging it out into the water.

  But Henry Hudson was still standing quietly by the door, his wrists still tightly bound.

  Only the man with the gun had moved. Rather than pointing the gun at Henry Hudson, he’d turned it, so he was now aiming at …

  Jonah had to crane his neck and try to look around the mast.

  A whole cluster of sailors was jumping around over by the stairs. Jonah saw a flash of sword, but he couldn’t tell who was holding it. One of the sailors on the edge turned around and yelled at the man with the gun.

  “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! You’ll hit one of us!”