Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children (35 page)

I heard a shout and looked up to see a man in a gray uniform rise from a hatch in the conning tower and level a gun at us.

Bullets rained down, hammering the deck. The cage was too far away—we’d be torn to pieces before we could reach it—but I could see that Emma was about to try anyway.

I ran and tackled her and we tumbled sideways off the deck and into the water. The black sea closed above us. Bullets peppered the water, leaving trails of bubbles in their wake.

When we surfaced again, she grabbed me and screamed, “Why did you do that? I nearly had them!”

“He was about to kill you!” I said, wrestling away—and then it occurred to me that she hadn’t even seen him, she’d been so focused on the cage, so I pointed up at the deck, where the gunner was striding toward it. He picked the cage up and rattled it. Its door hung open, and I thought I saw movement inside—some reason for hope—and then the lighthouse beam washed over everything. I saw the gunner’s face full in the light, his mouth curled into a leering grin, his eyes depthless and blank. He was a wight.

He reached into the cage and pulled out a single sodden bird. From the conning tower, another soldier whistled to him, and he ran back toward the hatch with it.

The sub began to rattle and hiss. The water around us churned as if boiling.

“Swim or it’ll suck us down with it!” I shouted to Emma. But she hadn’t heard me—her eyes were locked elsewhere, on a patch of dark water near the stern of the boat.

She swam for it. I tried to stop her but she fought me off. Then, over the whine of the sub, I heard it—a high, shrieking call. Miss Peregrine!

We found her bobbing in the waves, struggling to keep her head above water, one wing flapping, the other broken looking. Emma scooped her up. I screamed that we had to go.

We swam away with what little strength we had. Behind us, a whirlpool was opening up, all the water displaced by the sub rushing back to fill the void as it sank. The sea was consuming itself and trying to consume us, too, but we had with us now a screeching winged symbol of victory, or half a victory at least, and she gave us the strength to fight the unnatural current. Then we heard Bronwyn shouting our names, and our brawny friend came crashing through the waves to tow us back to safety.

*   *   *

We lay on the rocks beneath the clearing sky, gasping for air and trembling with exhaustion. Millard and Bronwyn had so many questions, but we had no breath to answer them. They had seen Golan’s body fall and the submarine rise and sink and Miss Peregrine come out of the water but not Miss Avocet; they understood what they needed to. They hugged us until we stopped shaking, and Bronwyn tucked the headmistress under her shirt for warmth. Once we’d recovered a little, we retrieved Emma’s canoe and pushed off toward the shore.

When we got there, the children all waded into the shallows to meet us.

“We heard shooting!”

“What was that strange boat?”

“Where’s Miss Peregrine?”

We climbed out of the rowboat, and Bronwyn raised her shirt to reveal the bird nuzzled there. The children crowded around, and Miss Peregrine lifted her beak and crowed at them to show that she was tired but all right. A cheer went up.

“You did it!” Hugh shouted.

Olive danced a little jig and sang, “The Bird, the Bird, the Bird! Emma and Jacob saved the Bird!”

But the celebration was brief. Miss Avocet’s absence was quickly noted, as was Millard’s alarming condition. His tourniquet was tight, but he’d lost a lot of blood and was weakening. Enoch gave him his coat, Fiona offered her woolen hat.

“We’ll take you to see the doctor in town,” Emma said to him.

“Nonsense,” Millard replied. “The man’s never laid eyes on an invisible boy, and he wouldn’t know what to do with one if he did. He’d either treat the wrong limb or run away screaming.”

“It doesn’t matter if he runs away screaming,” Emma said. “Once the loop resets he won’t remember a thing.”

“Look around you. The loop should’ve reset an hour ago.”

Millard was right—the skies were quiet, the battle had ended, but rolling drifts of bomb smoke still mixed with the clouds.

“That’s not good,” Enoch said, and everyone got quiet.

“In any case,” Millard continued, “all the supplies I need are in the house. Just give me a bolt of Laudanum and swab the wound with alcohol. It’s only the fleshy part anyway. In three days I’ll be right as rain.”

“But it’s still bleeding,” Bronwyn said, pointing out red droplets that dotted the sand beneath him.

“Then tie the damn tourniquet tighter!”

She did, and Millard gasped in a way that made everyone cringe, then fainted into her arms.

“Is he all right?” Claire asked.

“Just blacked out is all,” said Enoch. “He ain’t as fit as he pretends to be.”

“What do we do now?”

“Ask Miss Peregrine!” Olive said.

“Right. Put her down so she can change back,” said Enoch. “She can’t very well tell us what to do while she’s still a bird.”

So Bronwyn set her on a dry patch of sand, and we all stood back and waited. Miss Peregrine hopped a few times and flapped her good wing and then swiveled her feathered head around and blinked at us—but that was it. She remained a bird.

“Maybe she wants a little privacy,” Emma suggested. “Let’s turn our backs.”

So we did, forming a ring around her. “It’s safe now, Miss P,” said Olive. “No one’s looking!”

After a minute, Hugh snuck a peek and said, “Nope, still a bird.”

“Maybe she’s too tired and cold,” Claire said, and enough of the others agreed this was plausible that it was decided we would go back to the house, treat Millard with what supplies we had, and hope that with some time to rest, both the headmistress and her loop would return to normal.

Chapter Eleven

We marched up the steep trail and across the ridge like a company of war-weary veterans, single file, heads down, Bronwyn carrying Millard in her arms and Miss Peregrine riding the nestlike crown of Fiona’s hair. The landscape was gouged with smoking craters, fresh-turned earth thrown everywhere as if some giant dog had been digging at it. We all wondered what awaited us back at the house, but no one dared to ask.

We had our answer even before clearing the forest. Enoch’s foot kicked something, and he bent down to look. It was half a charred brick.

Panic broke out. The children began to sprint down the path. When they reached the lawn, the younger ones broke out in tears. There was smoke everywhere. The bomb had not come to rest atop Adam’s finger, as it usually did, but had split him straight down the middle and exploded. The back corner of the house had been reduced to a slumped and smoking ruin. Small fires burned in the charred shell of two rooms. Where Adam had been was a raw crater deep enough to bury a person upright. It was easy now to picture what this place would one day become: that sad and desecrated wreck I had first discovered weeks ago. The nightmare house.

Miss Peregrine leapt from Fiona’s hair and began to race around on the scorched grass, squawking in alarm.

“Headmistress, what happened?” Olive said. “Why hasn’t the changeover come?”

Miss Peregrine could only screech in reply. She seemed as confused and frightened as the rest of us.

“Please turn back!” begged Claire, kneeling before her.

Miss Peregrine flapped and jumped and seemed to be straining herself, but still couldn’t shift her shape. The children crowded around in concern.

“Something’s wrong,” Emma said. “If she could turn human, she would’ve done it by now.”

“Perhaps that’s why the loop slipped,” Enoch suggested. “Remember that old story about Miss Kestrel, when she was thrown from her bicycle in a road accident? She knocked her head and stayed a kestrel for a whole entire week. That’s when her loop slipped.”

“What’s that got to do with Miss Peregrine?”

Enoch sighed. “Maybe she’s only injured her head and we just need to wait a week for her to come to her senses.”

“A speeding lorry’s one thing,” Emma said. “Being abused by wights is quite another. There’s no knowing what that bastard did to Miss Peregrine before we got to her.”

“Wights? As in plural?”

“It was wights who took Miss Avocet,” I said.

“How do you know that?” demanded Enoch.

“They were working with Golan, weren’t they? And I saw the eyes of the one who shot at us. There’s no question.”

“Then Miss Avocet’s as good as dead,” said Hugh. “They’ll kill her for sure.”

“Maybe not,” I replied. “At least not right away.”

“If there’s one thing I know about wights,” said Enoch, “it’s that they kill peculiars. It’s their nature. It’s what they do.”

“No, Jacob’s right,” said Emma. “Before that wight died, he told us why they’ve been abducting so many ymbrynes. They’re going to force them to re-create the reaction that made the hollows in the first place—only bigger. Much bigger.”

I heard someone gasp. Everyone else fell silent. I looked around for Miss Peregrine and saw her perched forlornly on the edge of Adam’s crater.

“We’ve got to stop them,” Hugh said. “We’ve got to find out where they’re taking the ymbrynes.”

“How?” said Enoch. “Follow a submarine?”

Behind me a throat cleared loudly, and we turned to see Horace sitting cross-legged on the ground. “I know where they’re going,” he said quietly.

“What do you mean, you know?”

“Never mind how he knows, he
knows
,” said Emma. “Where are they taking her, Horace?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know the name,” he said, “but I’ve seen it.”

“Then draw it,” I said.

He thought for a moment and then rose stiffly. Looking like a beggar evangelist in his torn black suit, he shuffled to an ash pile that had spilled from the cracked-open house and bent to gather a palm full of soot. Then, in the soft light of the moon, he began to paint on a broken wall with broad strokes.

We gathered around to watch. He made a row of bold vertical stripes topped with thin loops, like bars and razor wire. To one side was a dark forest. There was snow on the ground, rendered in black. And that was all.

When it was done, he staggered back and sat down hard in the grass, a dull distant look in his eyes. Emma took him gently by the shoulder and said, “Horace, what more do you know about this place?”

“It’s somewhere cold.”

Bronwyn stepped forward to study the marks Horace had made. She held Olive in the crook of her arm, the little girl’s head resting sweetly on her shoulder. “Looks like a jail to me,” said Bronwyn.

Olive raised her head. “Well?” came her small voice. “When do we go?”

“Go where?” Enoch said, tossing up his hands. “That’s just a lot of squiggles!”

“It’s
somewhere
,” Emma said, turning to face him.

“We can’t simply go someplace snowy and look for a prison.”

“And we can’t very well stay here.”

“Why not?”

“Look at the state of this place. Look at the headmistress. We had a damn good run here, but it’s over.”

Enoch and Emma went back and forth for a while. People took sides. Enoch’s argued that they’d been too long out of the world, that they’d get snared in the war or caught by hollows if they left, that it was better to take their chances here, where at least they knew the territory. The others insisted that the war and the hollows had come to
them
now, and they had no choice. The hollows and wights would return for Miss Peregrine, and in ever-greater numbers. And there was Miss Peregrine herself to consider.

“We’ll find another ymbryne,” Emma suggested. “If anyone will know how to help the headmistress, it’ll be one of her friends.”

“But what if all the other loops have slipped too?” said Hugh. “What if all the ymbrynes have already been kidnapped?”

“We can’t think that way. There must be
some
left.”

“Emma’s right,” Millard said, lying on the ground with a chunk of broken masonry under his head for a pillow. “If the alternative is to wait and just hope—that no more hollows come, that the headmistress gets better—I say that’s no alternative at all.”

The dissenters were finally shamed into agreement. The house would be abandoned. Belongings would be packed. A few boats would be requisitioned from the harbor and pressed into service, and in the morning everyone would go.

I asked Emma how they were going to navigate. After all, none the children had been off the island in nearly eighty years, and Miss Peregrine couldn’t speak or fly.

“There’s a map,” she told me, turning her head slowly to look at the smoking house. “If it hasn’t burned, that is.”

I volunteered to help her find it. Wrapping wet cloths over our faces, we ventured into the house, entering through the collapsed wall. The windows were shattered, the air hung with smoke, but by the bright light of Emma’s hand-flame we found our way to the study. All the shelves had fallen like dominoes, but we shoved them aside and searched through the books spilled across the floor, crouching low. As luck would have it, the book was easy to find: it was the largest one in the library. Emma yelped with joy and held it up.

On the way out, we found alcohol and Laudanum and proper bandages for Millard. Once we’d helped clean and dress his wound, we sat down to examine the book. It was more atlas than map, bound in quilted leather dyed a deep burgundy, each page drawn carefully on what looked like parchment. It was very fine and very old, and big enough to fill Emma’s lap.