Roanoke: The Price of Power

Epilogue: Those Left Behind

Three children moved westward through the wilds of Roanoke island.

Two of them walked, their clothes shredded and stained with the blood of their parents and many, many others. The first, a boy of fifteen years, carried a book that once belonged to man named Darius. The other, a girl of thirteen, held in her arms the year-old daughter of assistant governor Ananias Dare.

They'd walked since the previous night, when Darius had dismissed them into the darkness beyond their colony's walls. There had been eleven of them then, but when each of them felt the death of Darius in their minds, most of their number chose to return to the protection of the walls.

These children did not return. There was no protection within the walls, and nothing to fear without. They knew this, for they had actually listened to the words of the powerful man in black. The man who came to free them, to empower them, to give them life in years that never stopped counting.

These two listened to him and they learned. And they drank. Not like the cowards, the crying ones like Tom Archard who, even after spilling the blood, refused to complete the ritual. He had angered Darius greatly, Tom.

"He will be the most powerful among you," Darius had said once, until the boy turned craven and ran from his purpose.

Such is why Tom Archard had been given the most humiliating task on the last night. When the other children rose up and cut and slashed and stabbed, poor little Tom was the one stuck opening the gates for the wolves.

Fool.

The three children made their destination by nightfall, the west shore of the island where Indian traders would paddle their boats across the sound to meet with men like the late Jeremy Swift.

They slept there that night under the stars, and in the morning the boy trapped a rabbit and shared the blood and warm flesh with the elder girl.

The young Virginia Dare would not drink the blood, they learned, but only cried and cried when they wrung it from the rabbit and into her mouth. The elder girl then offered the wailing child her breast, as she had seen done, but her blossoming teat had no cause to produce milk. A new lesson learned.

They were very thankful that a small boat eventually arrived with a pair of dark-skinned natives at the oars. The men seemed peaceful, eager and genuinely concerned for their unusual discovery. The natives spoke little, but they understood well enough the most important words. Those being the words issued by the boy -- exhausted, filthy, and covered with blood:

"Help us."