I rushed back to town and toward the terrible noise. My skirts caught and tore on the brush, but my family was my only concern. Shouts came in every direction, and chaos descended.

"Ananias! Virginia!"

Another rumble shook the ground, sending everyone to their knees. I managed to protect my womb from damage as I fell to my side. A louder, more unified, scream tore through the town. As my eyes traveled up, I saw the blinding haze of gold rushing toward us, drowning the colony in its totality.

I shot up, damp with sweat. My eyes frantically took in the emerald green mural and the furniture, and I realized I'd been dreaming. Except, the dream hadn't felt like a dream. My heart hammered in my chest, still unsure of my body's safety. Eleanor's story had clearly eaten away at my subconscious.

I tried to lay back down and return to sleep, but when I closed my eyes, I was back in the colony experiencing terrifying earthquakes and searching for my—I mean, Eleanor's—family. Resignedly, I clicked on the bedside lamp and pulled out the green book. Perhaps reading the resolution of Eleanor's story would bring me solace.

When the dust settled, I found Virginia in the hands of her nursemaid, an Algonquian woman who had joined our colony months prior. The woman was dead from a fallen beam, but Virginia was unharmed.

Survivors gathered near the rip in the earth. After days of deliberation and several exploratory parties, women such as myself were allowed to visit. After the Mandoag attacked our weaken settlement, the entire colony decided to move to the other side of the golden rift.

This world bears no resemblance to that which lies above. Perhaps the adjustment to the Americas was overstated in difficulty for surely even that pales to the alien environment that we found beneath our old home. Many cast debate on whether we should return to Roanoke, but when our godlike abilities, our katara, began to reveal themselves, even I held no doubts.

The truth is simple.

We can never return to the colony or to England. We can vanquish the Mandoag without ever raising a musket, but any Christian who witnesses our power, even my father, will burn us as daemons. Even among our people, the first to exhibit the traits were mistakenly burned at the stake. Now, we recognize it as a colony-wide contagion. It is a hard truth to admit, but with it comes the resolve necessary to leave. I carved the word Croatoan into the tree outside of camp hoping that Father would understand we had found sanctuary. Even if it was not where he believes it to be.

We have discovered shelter and food source and allies in this odd land, but I ponder what dangers this land will spawn in the time to come. I can only pray to the Lord that He hears our prayers. Hopefully, He has not abandoned us.

Was that really Eleanor's life? I skimmed over pages of tribulation, trying to see if her tale ever became more light and fun, but when nothing leaped out, I continued reading in hopes that a happy ending would help me find peaceful sleep.

Among the many mysteries of this land, there seems to be a great question of power that has turned against the men for the first time. Roger Bailee led a protest against the shift with no success. We, the women of this new land, hold a strength within ourselves that refuses to be settled with the in the roles of subservience and motherhood alone. We, the women of this new land, have forged roles so foreign to ourselves that we must rely on the words of these Natives to describe our power.

After the death of Mrs Archard, I have become the favorite for leadership much to my own unease. I was not bred for such a role as this, and I have no training to rely upon. I am nothing like Her Majesty, but I find myself wondering what she would do in such an unusual situation.

To make matters especially terse, the leaders of these Native groups—Empress Charis Atlas and ajaw Metztli K'awiil—seem to be holding something back. Each is exceedingly generous towards us, but the disdain they hold for each other has me doubting their sincerity. They are nothing like the Native Peoples of the New World who have rudimentary weaponry and simplistic warfare. These people possess power and innovation that surpass England by centuries. If I stray too far from the median, I fear we will start a war among these groups—a war that will bring great casualties upon ourselves.

The Empress and the ajaw seem particularly interested in Eva Viccars and both requested updates on her child's impending birth. I made an effort to understand why, and what I found created more questions than answers. Unfortunately, establishing peace of our colony came before the querulous beliefs of these peoples. We've begun—

I flipped to the next page, expecting Eleanor to continue with some sort of resolution as to how the Dareship was established and Roanoke finally started flourishing, but the next several pages were completely missing. Only little paper remnants prove that there are supposed to be three more pages in Eleanor's story.

So much for helping me go to sleep, I thought, peeved at the book.

It continued to bother me, so I looked to the next available page which was the start of the next chapter. It wasn't written by Eleanor, but, instead, by a man named Dr. George Harvye, PhD, a scholar on Roanoke's Gilgamesh Phenomenon. It was titled: "The Science Behind Roanoke's Gilgamesh Phenomenon: A Brief Exploration".

The topography within the surrounding area affected by the event compounded with the barometric temperature and wind speed construe conditions abnormal to the Virginia climate; however, temperature remained unaffected, introducing a constant that...

It turns out that the scholar's chapter was the solution to my problems all along. I couldn't make it through the entire sentence without my eyes pulling themselves shut. The next morning, after a bout of dreamless sleep, I woke up with the book still in my hand.

***

"Did you read the Dare Mother's account?" Payne asked as he opened the door to his study.

"About that, there seemed to be some pages missing." I responded as I slipped through the doorway.

"That's none of your concern. You were expected to read the account as is."

"I did." I said with a forced smile.

He narrowed his eyes. "We'll see about that. Sit."

I forced myself to hold the smile and took my seat.

"What was the temperature just prior to the incident?" Payne asked, taking a pen and paper to record my answers.

Wait, what? Does he really expect me to remember useless stuff like that?!

Payne took note of my alarm and smiled a small, sadistic smile. Apparently, he did.

Trying not to panic, I scanned my brain, hoping I could remember. "I remember she said it was the middle of summer, so it would be somewhere between the mid-sixties and low eighties, but it was evening, so..."

I tapped my index finger against the book, wishing I could open it and peak at the answer. In my head, I filtered through everything. Words and nonsense that had nothing to do with Eleanor's story bounced around together like loose change in a dryer. Nothing leapt out.

"Well?" Payne asked, rather expectantly.

Screw it. I spit out a number: half-impulse, half-instinct, and one-hundred-percent an educated guess. "73?"

He cleared his throat. "You forgot the units."

"Umm, Fahrenheit?" I truly guessed, hoping it would be right.

"74 degrees would be a more accurate measure of the temperature," he commented, making a note of my error. "What phase was the moon when the event took place?"

I did know that one. The answer was referenced in Auntie's book also. "Full moon."

He narrowed his eyes. "What was the name of the Atlantisian ruler who aided Eleanor in her transition to the position of leadership?"

"Charis Atlas."

"You forgot her proper title. That is highly inappropriate." He chided, making a mark.

"Sorry, her name was Empress Charis Atlas."

He frowned at this. He grabbed the book from my fingers, trapping it under his hand like he thought I was somehow cheating.

"What was the term that Eleanor Dare used to describe their new abilities?"

"Uhh," I searched my brain, trying to remember the weird word. "Ka... tana, right?"

"You tell me," he smirked. "It's you test not mine."

He was the mean little eight-year-old that cheered for Thanos, I mused as I tried to scour my brain for the answer. "No, its katara."

He hmphed and scribbled a small note. "Well, what does katara mean?"

"I—" I tried to search my knowledge for the answer, but nothing came up. I even tried to visualize the pages and recall everything, but I could only remember once that the word was mentioned, about what it meant. "I don't think that the meaning is ever addressed."

His face broke into a smug smile. "Either way, you should be able to figure it out."

I balked, knowing in my heart that it was a trick question. "Is it something Latin?"

He scoffed. "It's a word found in early texts of the Christian Bible."

"Bibles are all in English in Ge—the place where I come from." My blood went cold when I nearly blurted out my home to Payne. Georgia, granted, is a big state, but there can't be that many Gwyndolyn Dares in Georgia. And the less Payne knew about my home, the safer my family was.

"It's origin is Ancient Hellenes—or Ancient Greek as some Latin-speaking bigots might say," he explained.

"So, what does it mean?"

He tapped his index finger against the book's cover mindlessly while making another note. What was he writing about me, and who would those notes go to? It all reminded me too much of school.

"What do you think it means, Young Dare? You have the arrogance of someone with intellect, so demonstrate it."

Was that his version of a compliment? I may never know.

"She refers to the katara as their special abilities, so katara must mean gift or maybe skill."

"You could not be more wrong," he chuckled darkly, taking note of my failure before putting his pen down carefully. "You have completely misinterpreted the context of the transformations of the citizens of Roanoke. At this point in time, their abilities were not gifts. They were considered marks of the devil. They were isolated from their past by the power you so quaintly referred to as 'magic'. For our founders, Transformation was something to look forward to. It was a curse."

"So katara means curse?" I said, numbly thinking of how Colel used to call her acne scars 'marks of the devil'. Somehow, I don't think this was the same.

He pressed his lips into a grim line, ignorant of my silly musing. "And you would do well to remember that."

Well, Payne continues to be a pard, but hopefully Eleanor’s account can begin to shed light on the history of Roanoke and the huge event that led to them joining the Upper Realm.

So, I leave you with this question: What do you think is on that missing page?

As always, thank you so much for your support!

-MM