Chip still had a stunned look on his face, like it’d just dawned on him that he really did have siblings.
“What happened to your father?” Jonah asked quietly. He couldn’t shake the feeling he’d had earlier, when he was thinking about The Lion King. There was an uncle in the movie, too. Scar. He gasped, remembering the entire plot now.
“Did your uncle kill your father?” he asked in a choked voice.
But both Chip and Alex were shaking their heads.
“Nah,” Chip said. “He just got sick and died.”
“Maybe he was poisoned,” Jonah said. Scar killed Simba’s father, he thought. It was awful when remembering Disney movies terrified you.
Alex snorted.
“Nobody had to poison him,” he said. “He was kind of a … a party animal.”
“And bulimic, right?” Chip asked. “Isn’t that what you’d call it?”
“Oh, yeah,” Alex said. “Hundreds of years before anybody came up with that name. Remember Christmas?” As Chip nodded, Alex turned to Jonah and Katherine to explain. “He ate and drank, ate and drank—roast beef and puddings and everything else—and then he threw it all up to make room to stuff himself again.”
“They have bingeing and purging in the fifteenth century?” Katherine asked, making a disgusted face.
“Oh, yeah. We call it ‘eating in the Roman style,’” Alex said. “It’s a sign of wealth, that someone can afford that much food.”
Strangely, Alex and Chip both had admiring looks on their faces. Katherine looked like Jonah felt: like she wanted to gag.
“That’s just gross!” she said.
Alex and Chip looked insulted.
“But he was a good king,” Chip added quickly. “Don’t forget that.”
“Of course,” Alex agreed, nodding loyally. “Edward the Fourth. Our father.”
Our, Jonah thought. So much for Katherine’s being excited that they were using third-person pronouns.
The candle by the bedside flickered, as if some new breeze had entered the room. Jonah turned just in time to see the door slowly sliding forward.
“Someone’s coming again!” he hissed. “Hide!”
Jonah scrambled up, ready to rush back to the other room. Katherine was right beside him. But Chip and Alex weren’t moving at all. Wait—yes, they were. They were both leaning toward their tracers.
“This way!” Jonah whispered, grabbing the hood of Chip’s sweatshirt and yanking. “Katherine—get Alex!”
Katherine tugged on Alex’s arm, but all that did was counter his forward momentum. She wasn’t strong enough to pull him backward. Jonah caught a glimpse of her horrified face as she glanced back toward the door, now open a full inch and still moving.
Katherine bent over and blew out the candle.
SIX
Jonah could still see—a little, anyway—by the gleaming light of the ghostly tracer boys. They still huddled on the bed, one praying, one sleeping, each still oblivious to the moving door.
Chip and Alex, the modern versions, seemed nearly as oblivious.
“You just changed history!” Chip hissed angrily at Katherine. “Even a single candle extinguished—”
“I had to!” Katherine whispered back. “We have to save you!”
Jonah kept watching the door, still creaking open, slowly, slowly, slowly. … Maybe this would just be another serving girl. Maybe she’d see the darkness, assume both boys were asleep, and tiptoe away.
Or maybe it was the uncle, come to murder them. Maybe his job would be that much easier in the darkness.
“Mother promised she’d send someone to rescue us!” Alex exulted in a loud whisper.
Jonah clapped his hand over Alex’s mouth. Never mind saving Alex and Chip from history—how could Jonah save them from themselves? How could Jonah keep Alex quiet, pull Chip back into hiding, get Katherine and Alex safely out of sight too … and somehow relight the blown-out candle? All before the door opened another inch wider?
It was impossible. Jonah didn’t even have time to take a breath before the figures of two men appeared in the doorway.
They had a candle of their own.
Fortunately, the puny candle glow barely illuminated the floor directly in front of them, so Jonah didn’t have to worry about being seen yet. He found himself wishing the men carried a slightly stronger light—he wanted to see their faces. It wasn’t that he thought he’d recognize anyone from the fifteenth century. But surely if he could see their expressions, he’d know if they were planning murder or rescue. Wouldn’t he?
It didn’t matter. The men’s faces were cloaked in shadow thicker than beards, their eye sockets like dark holes.
Then one of the men spoke.
“I thought the young prince always had to have a candle burning at night,” he said softly. “Afraid of the dark, they say.”
And for a split second there was a bit of light around his mouth, the same kind of light that glowed from the tracer boys on the bed.
That isn’t what he said in the original version of history, Jonah thought. That’s the only reason I can see his mouth. It’s moving differently just because Katherine blew out that candle. …
The other man shrugged and laid a finger on his lips. This must have been the same thing he’d done the first time around, because no tracer light glowed on him.
“Hush,” he whispered. “If we can do this whilst they slumber, ’twill be easier.”
“I slumber not,” Chip spoke up, loudly, boldly.
Oh, no! Why hadn’t Jonah put his hand over Chip’s mouth too?
Jonah froze. Should he inch back from Chip and Alex—save himself now that he couldn’t save them? Maybe grab Katherine, too …
Katherine dug her elbow into Jonah’s ribs. She pointed, a hard motion to follow in the near-total darkness. But Jonah saw that she wanted him to look at the bed, where Chip’s tracer was sitting up straight, his mouth moving precisely in sync with Chip’s next words: “Who goes there?”
“Friends,” the man replied in a hushed voice. “Your mother, the fair Queen Elizabeth, sent us to rescue you. …”