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Authors: K W Taylor
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shoreline. Behind her, the colonists added to their numbers and were now wielding honest-to-God pitchforks and torches. “I’m not you people’s Dracula,” she muttered. “Goddammit, I thought this kind of thing was a cliché.”
She didn’t figure they’d go after her as a spy. That was the funny thing. Depending on how she’d been found, the worst the agency warned her against was accusations of witchcraft. Hide, they instructed her. As soon as you realize you’ve made it, you’ve got to hide until you can collect yourself.
She’d have to tell them they got the clothes wrong. Way too fancy and impractical. As she ran, her breath growing ragged and labored, Fallon wished she could rip the moldering skirts off, escape from the confines of her petticoats, and run in just her linen knee-length drawers. When she caught the cry of men shouting “Whore!” behind her, Fallon knew this idea would add fuel to that fire. “Damnable whore! Spy!”
So much for solving a mystery . Shit, what a disappointment.
At the shoreline, she scanned the roiling waves for… “Fuck, where is it?” she grunted in frustration. She crouched low, picking her way down the precarious rockface, making sure to keep the beach in sight. If she wasn’t precise in her aim…But no, she dropped down and knew as soon as she felt the ground give a little more under her weight that she’d made it.
This wasn’t the retrieval spot, though. Fallon raced toward the tree line, the colonists at her heels.
They’ve made me. They know there’s something not right with me. I’m not from here. I’m not from now. And they all know it.
It wouldn’t do to already go out to Croatan if that wasn’t where the colonists wound up. No, she would need to go to the groups of Chowanoke or Iroquois in and around the settlement. Fallon scuttled along the beach until she reached the far side of the island, the side uninhabited by the colonists. She shut her eyes, trying to call up the image of the period map she’d almost-but-not-completely memorized. At least one of the tribes shouldn’t be far.
When she wound her way through the trees to the clearing, she was startled. She expected nudity, savagery, ritual, drums. Instead, there were silent tents and huts, a few men sitting around a fire laughing together and murmuring in what was clearly English. One of them wore deerskins, but another wore a shabby scarlet jacket, a hand-me-down from a British soldier. She found it all incongruous and offensive, these natives wearing the clothes of the colonists. Were they so civilized? How on earth did Roanoke put up with their presence, let alone teach them their language, give them their clothes? Yes, the theories were that White’s group intermarried with them, but Fallon could not fathom such a thing—they were kidnapped, in her opinion. What respectable English people would take up with savages? Once she was back to her own time, she would take up with the RAA, full stop. The Empiricists understood nothing about racial purity.
She’d been musing too long, and soon she knew they’d sensed her.
“Come out,” one of the men said, not unkindly. “Governor? Is that you?”
Shit. “Um, no, no, it’s not the governor.” Fallon walked forward into the clearing. Too late, she realized she hadn’t reasoned this out enough to craft an understandable story for them. “I am from the north, and I was shipwrecked,” she tried, simplifying the tale she’d told the colonists. “May I have shelter?”
They exchanged looks and quiet words in a tongue she didn’t understand. A young woman came forward from between two groups of men. “Roanoke?” the woman asked.
Fallon shook her head. They couldn’t find her here, not if she wanted to be safe. “No, I haven’t located Roanoke,” she tried. “I was from the Canadian colonies.” Shit, did they call it Canada yet? Her mainlining of seventeenth century North American history meant to prepare her for this all
She didn’t figure they’d go after her as a spy. That was the funny thing. Depending on how she’d been found, the worst the agency warned her against was accusations of witchcraft. Hide, they instructed her. As soon as you realize you’ve made it, you’ve got to hide until you can collect yourself.
She’d have to tell them they got the clothes wrong. Way too fancy and impractical. As she ran, her breath growing ragged and labored, Fallon wished she could rip the moldering skirts off, escape from the confines of her petticoats, and run in just her linen knee-length drawers. When she caught the cry of men shouting “Whore!” behind her, Fallon knew this idea would add fuel to that fire. “Damnable whore! Spy!”
So much for solving a mystery . Shit, what a disappointment.
At the shoreline, she scanned the roiling waves for… “Fuck, where is it?” she grunted in frustration. She crouched low, picking her way down the precarious rockface, making sure to keep the beach in sight. If she wasn’t precise in her aim…But no, she dropped down and knew as soon as she felt the ground give a little more under her weight that she’d made it.
This wasn’t the retrieval spot, though. Fallon raced toward the tree line, the colonists at her heels.
They’ve made me. They know there’s something not right with me. I’m not from here. I’m not from now. And they all know it.
It wouldn’t do to already go out to Croatan if that wasn’t where the colonists wound up. No, she would need to go to the groups of Chowanoke or Iroquois in and around the settlement. Fallon scuttled along the beach until she reached the far side of the island, the side uninhabited by the colonists. She shut her eyes, trying to call up the image of the period map she’d almost-but-not-completely memorized. At least one of the tribes shouldn’t be far.
When she wound her way through the trees to the clearing, she was startled. She expected nudity, savagery, ritual, drums. Instead, there were silent tents and huts, a few men sitting around a fire laughing together and murmuring in what was clearly English. One of them wore deerskins, but another wore a shabby scarlet jacket, a hand-me-down from a British soldier. She found it all incongruous and offensive, these natives wearing the clothes of the colonists. Were they so civilized? How on earth did Roanoke put up with their presence, let alone teach them their language, give them their clothes? Yes, the theories were that White’s group intermarried with them, but Fallon could not fathom such a thing—they were kidnapped, in her opinion. What respectable English people would take up with savages? Once she was back to her own time, she would take up with the RAA, full stop. The Empiricists understood nothing about racial purity.
She’d been musing too long, and soon she knew they’d sensed her.
“Come out,” one of the men said, not unkindly. “Governor? Is that you?”
Shit. “Um, no, no, it’s not the governor.” Fallon walked forward into the clearing. Too late, she realized she hadn’t reasoned this out enough to craft an understandable story for them. “I am from the north, and I was shipwrecked,” she tried, simplifying the tale she’d told the colonists. “May I have shelter?”
They exchanged looks and quiet words in a tongue she didn’t understand. A young woman came forward from between two groups of men. “Roanoke?” the woman asked.
Fallon shook her head. They couldn’t find her here, not if she wanted to be safe. “No, I haven’t located Roanoke,” she tried. “I was from the Canadian colonies.” Shit, did they call it Canada yet? Her mainlining of seventeenth century North American history meant to prepare her for this all
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