Free Torn-missing 4 by Margaret Peterson Haddix

marveled.
That scared?
    Katherine was only a year younger than Jonah. She’d been a force of nature in his life for as long as he could remember, constantly flouncing in and out of the house, tagging along after him and his friends, tattling, “Jonah hurt my feelings! Make him let me play with him!” The minute Katherine walked into a room, Jonah always knew right away if she was happy or sad or angry or worried or frightened or ecstatic. And if Jonah or Mom or Dad didn’t pick up on all the cues right away, she spelled it out for them, in diatribes that could last hours.
    Was it possible that Katherine had changed too? In the midst of all their time traveling and getting lost and risking their lives and saving their friends’ lives and never knowing if everything was going to work out—was it possiblethat Katherine had actually learned how to hide her emotions? Some of them, anyway?
    A tear rolled down her cheek, and she wiped it away without saying a word.
    She shivered, and didn’t say anything about that, either.
    “Here, uh, Katherine, I bet you’re really cold,” Jonah said. “You can wear my cloak.”
    He started to take it off, but even more tears welled in her eyes. Suddenly it seemed more important to make her laugh than to comfort her.
    “Or—you could wrap this canvas blanket around yourself,” Jonah said, lifting an edge of the canvas they’d been sitting on. “I bet it only
smells
like it’s carried dead fish across the ocean.” He wrapped the canvas around himself, to demonstrate. “See? It’s almost like a Snuggie—”
    He stopped, because there was something under the canvas. Something flat and smooth. … He pulled out a packet wrapped and tied in some sort of dried animal skins. He peeled back the skins to find papers inside.
    “Maybe somebody has been leaving coded messages up here!” Katherine said excitedly.
    “I don’t think it’s coded,” Jonah whispered, staringdown at the papers. “I think it’s flat-out true.”
    He’d already read the first sentence:
    Something very strange and dangerouse ys happyning on The Discoverie….

“Maybe JB figured out how to leave us written messages, even though he can’t get through to us on the Elucidator,” Katherine said hopefully. She started to reach for the papers, so she could see them too. Then her face fell. “Or—maybe it’s Second again.”
    Second had left them written messages before, back in 1600. Second’s messages had always been short—and manipulative.
    This message was long and written in an old-fashioned script.
    “I don’t think Second would go to this much effort to make his message look like it belongs in 1611,” Jonah said. “He always wanted us to know it was him, when he contacted us before. I think—I think someone actually on the ship right now wrote this.”
    He was scanning the rest of the words as quickly as he could:
    Conditions have beene difficult and troubling from the time we left Lundon on the 17th of April, in the Year of Our Lord, 1610. The men have fought over coats, over bread, over which way a tossed hammer may land. … The master ys like a straw in the wind, favoring first one man, then another, deciding nothing, angering all. I believe he has secrets he chooses not to reveal. But those secrets may be the death of us all.
    I have many reasons to fear for my lyfe, as I lie gravely ill, and there is little hope that I will see the shoares of my beloved homeland again. But I do not fear death. I am reconciled to my fate. What I cannot reconcile is the fear that the storie of this voyage will be told only by those who betray its purpose. Deception walks on the Discoverie; mutiny lurks in the minds and souls of cowards. I believe the evil plans will come to fruition soon….
    “Aw, it’s just about the mutiny that already happened,” Jonah said disappointedly, lowering the papers. “This doesn’t help us at all.”
    “It could tell us what caused the mutiny,” Katherine said.