by Ransom Riggs
What happened to you? I wondered, locking eyes with him. Bentham and Caul were trapped together in the collapsed Library of Souls. When your brother was resurrected, did you come back, too?
And then I swear I saw his lip twitch, and I felt a cold charge go through me and hurried out of the washroom.
Noor was waiting for me outside, looking uncomfortable in a black-and-white striped dress that brushed her ankles. Her hair was pulled into a hasty ponytail, her face washed and shining, and I thought how remarkable it was that it took so little effort for her to be beautiful.
“You look great,” I said.
She shook her head and laughed like I’d told a corny joke. “I look like I’m going to a circus funeral.” She gave me a genuine smile. “I like you in a suit, though.” Then she sighed. “You okay?”
It was the question we asked each other most often. We lived in trying times, and there were so many ways to not be okay.
“Yeah,” I said. “You?”
This small exchange of words held a hundred potential shades of meaning. In this case: What took you so long in the bathroom? and Have you been able, for even a minute, to stop the horror movie playing on repeat in your head?
“I had mud in places you wouldn’t believe.” She shrugged. “I’m okay.” She closed the small gap between us and leaned her head against my shoulder. “Sorry, I complain when I’m nervous.”
I pressed my cheek to her hair. “I thought you hummed when you were nervous.”
“I’m testing this out instead.”
I put my arms around her, hugged her tight. There was a meter somewhere inside me, a confidence gauge, a bravery indicator, and every time I touched her it bounced upward.
“Ready?” I said.
“To confess my sins,” she said, and before I could argue with her word choice, Miss Peregrine and Enoch whooshed into the hall and escorted us out.
Our trip across the Acre was surreal. More surreal than usual, that is. It wasn’t just the strange sky, which was a bruised purple rather than its normal shade of sickly yellow, or the deep drifts of ash that swirled around our feet as we walked, or the dark rivulets of drying blood weeping down the walls of buildings. It was the idea, easy to forget from moment to moment, that we were now living in a nightmare, walking through a world in which the worst thing I could imagine, short of everyone I loved dying, had come to pass. It was a hard and immutable fact. And we were about to break this awful news to all our friends.
Enoch kept pestering me: “Who’s Him? Is it who I think it is? Is that why I almost got knocked unconscious by hail bones yesterday? Is he back?” But I wouldn’t tell him anything, and finally Miss Peregrine had to separate us so that he’d leave me alone.
It had not fully struck me how unwise the architecture of their house was until, crossing the last footbridge over their narrow tributary of Fever Ditch, I saw the place again. It was twice as wide at the third floor as it was at the ground, like a pyramid stood on its head, and was prevented from tipping into the Ditch only by a forest of wooden struts and stilts that stretched to the upper stories. In an attempt to brighten things up, Fiona had covered the leaning house in flowers—reinforced it, really, with long, winding cables of purple dogrose. They trailed up the stilts and spilled from window boxes. But they only filled me with dread, a reminder of the vines that held me down on Gravehill, and of the horror of being forced to watch helplessly as Murnau committed his atrocities.
The front door flew open. Olive bounded out and stomped down the rickety steps. “You must—stop—disappearing like this!” she cried, attacking me with a hug. And then the others all came flooding out, Horace and Millard and Claire and Hugh, so many at once that they bottlenecked in the doorway and had to struggle free of one another, and then they were rushing down the steps, crowding us, shouting questions.
“Is it really them?” Horace cried.
“It’s really them!” Olive sang, twirling to hug Noor.
“We’ve been looking everywhere for you!” said Claire, gaping at me with wide, frightened eyes. “Were you kidnapped?”
“They’d better have been!” Hugh said, pulling me into a hard embrace. “Not even a note!”
“They’ll tell you everything,” said Miss Peregrine, glancing at the curious faces peering from nearby buildings, “once we get indoors.”
We were bundled inside amid a cluster of nervously chattering friends. And there was Fiona, covered in blankets and chickens, on a daybed in the middle of the hay-strewn kitchen. She liked it better down here in the cozy mess, Hugh explained, and while she was recovering, Miss Peregrine had told her she could sleep wherever she liked. She beamed at me as I crossed the room and bent down to hug her.
“I hope you’re feeling better,” I said, and though she didn’t respond with words, she nodded and then kissed my cheek. The chicken in her arms clucked and ruffled its feathers possessively.
Miss Peregrine asked for quiet. She waved Noor and me to the center of the room, and our friends sat around us on wobbly wooden chairs and on the floor. They all looked as anxious as I was feeling. I was anxious to get this over with, to tell our story for what I dearly hoped would be the last time; anxious, too, about their reactions. Would they hate us? Would they despair?
We told it. They listened in grim, stunned silence. When it was over the air in the room felt leaden. Claire and Olive had scooted across the floor to Bronwyn and curled into balls against her legs. Claire was crying. Horace had crawled underneath the kitchen table. Hugh sat stone-faced on the daybed beside Fiona, who was holding his hand and staring at the floor. Emma—I cared most about her reaction—Emma had twisted her hair into a knot and was several shades paler than when Noor and I had started talking.
“You left out that part at the end,” Emma said, “when you told it before.” She blew out her breath.
“So he is back,” said Enoch. “Him is . . . him.”
“He’s back,” I said, nodding grimly. “Him is him.”
“Oh my bird, oh my God, oh hell,” Horace moaned from under the kitchen table. “It was his face I dreamed.”
Millard rose from where he’d been sitting. “I’m broken-hearted. I’m shattered.”
“V’s really . . . gone?” Olive asked meekly.
Noor nodded and said quietly, “Yeah. She’s gone.”
Olive ran to her, attached herself to Noor’s side. Noor rubbed Olive’s shoulder as the little girl began to cry.
“So, what does this mean for us?” Hugh asked. “What will happen?”
“Then it’s Caul who’s behind the desolations?” asked Bronwyn. “Not Perplexus?”
“Yes, we think so,” said Miss Peregrine.
“Oh, absolutely he is,” said Emma.
“I’m sure it’s only a taste of what he can do,” said Horace. “An amuse-bouche.”
“He’s warming up the orchestra,” Millard agreed. “He’ll be coming for us soon, and when he does you can be sure he’ll bring a lot more than bloody rain down on us.”
“We’re doomed! We’re sunk! This is the end of everything!” Claire wailed.
“He’s only one man,” said Addison, who I’d just noticed sitting by the door. “And aren’t most of his adherents dead or in prison? As for his hollowgast, can’t young Jacob polish off whatever few remain?”
“You don’t understand,” Emma said. “He’s not a man anymore, not really. You weren’t there, in the Library of Souls, when he transformed into that . . . thing . . .”
“I’m not allowed in most libraries,” Addison said with his muzzle raised, “so I boycott them on principle.”
“This isn’t a normal library,” said Millard. “It’s a repository for thousands of ancient peculiar souls, many of them extremely powerful. It was hidden for millennia, ever since certain evil peculiars discovered how to break into it and steal its souls, and thei
r abilities, for themselves.”
“They tried to fashion themselves into gods,” said Miss Peregrine. “And they succeeded, to a degree. But they warred with one another, causing famines, floods, plagues. They would have destroyed the whole world if our ancestor ymbrynes hadn’t managed to hide the Library from them. It stayed hidden so long that its existence faded to legend . . . until my brother broke into it again. We were able to collapse the loop and trap him there, we thought forever. Until, as you just heard, his top lieutenant resurrected him.”
“A scenario that was prophesied long ago,” said Horace. “Along with an apocalyptic war, similar to those ancient ones, that would leave the earth a cratered ruin. And us, presumably, dead.”
“Exceedingly dead,” said Enoch. “Caul despises us.”
“So, let me get this straight.” Addison raised an eyebrow. “You believe he’s absorbed some of these terrible powers for himself. And thus no longer needs an army of toadies and shadow-creatures at his beck and call.”
“That’s our general working presumption, yes,” said Millard.
“But none of you have actually seen him,” said Addison, “except the American boy, in a cloud, and that boy cowering under the table there, in a dream.”
“We saw him in the Library of Souls just before it collapsed,” said Emma. “He was a giant tree-monster.” Then, more quietly: “It was a lot scarier than it sounds.”
“And that was after absorbing just one soul-jar,” I said. “Who knows how many he’s absorbed since then.”
“Maybe all of them,” said Emma. She looked fearfully at Miss Peregrine. “Is that even possible?”
Miss Peregrine pursed her lips. “We’re treading in the realm of the hypothetical. We simply don’t know.”
“If he did then he’ll be absolutely unstoppable,” Horace cried.
“Don’t lose your wig,” said Enoch, rolling his eyes.
“I will, I will lose my wig when it’s appropriate!” Horace shouted. He crawled out from under the table and stood next to it, gesticulating wildly. “Caul had been trying to get his hands on Bentham’s resurrection ingredients for years. He wanted this. He planned for it! To get trapped in the Library, and then to be brought back again. He would never have put himself through that kind of hell unless he was sure it would make him better, stronger, eviler. He’s a lot more than a tree monster now, I can assure you. Not because I dreamed it—because I have a brain!”
Everyone was staring. His lip, and then the rest of him, began to quiver. “I’ll just go back under the table.”
“No you won’t,” said Emma, popping up to grab him. “We won’t be doing any more hiding, cowering, or running away. Right, Miss P?”
“I was hoping one of you would say that,” the ymbryne replied.
“Yes, I thought you people had more spine,” said Addison.
“Running away gets an unfairly bad rap,” said Horace. “The best offense is a good defense, don’t the American footballers say that?” He looked at me; I shook my head no. “No matter—it’s true. Does it really make sense for all of us to stay here in Devil’s Acre, where he can get us in one swat? Not only does he know just where to find us, he knows this loop inside and out. It was his headquarters for years.”
“We shouldn’t ever show him we’re scared,” said Bronwyn, her expression curdling. “Even if we are.”
“We’re stronger here, together,” said Hugh, and Fiona nodded along. “Besides which, we can’t abandon this place and let him have the Panloopticon again. It’s our most powerful tool. And it could be his.”
“You’re worried about what he’ll do with the Panloopticon?” Horace said, his voice rising again. “He could be omnipotent, omnipresent at this point. What does he need a hallway of loop doors for?”
“If he was omnipotent, we’d already be dead,” said Emma. “You must calm down a bit, and try not to scare the young ones.”
“I’m not scared,” Olive announced, and banged her little fist against her chest.
Miss Peregrine cleared her throat. “There’s one thing you must understand about my brother. I seriously doubt he wants to kill us. Well”—she winced briefly—“he may want to kill me, and perhaps Jacob as well, but not all of you, and not the rest of our people. He wants power and control. All he’s ever dreamed of, his whole bitter life, was to be the king and emperor of peculiarkind, to be worshipped by all the peculiars who mocked him as a child.”
“So he’ll just enslave us all,” Enoch said, “make us lick his boots and sing his praises and go on retreats at the weekend to murder normals, or whatever gives him his jollies.”
Emma climbed onto the kitchen table and stomped her foot, which made the silverware jump. “Can everyone please stop spinning out these terrified worst-case scenarios. We’re not seriously about to give up hope before we even understand the full dimensions of what we’re up against! Caul may be very powerful—we don’t even know how much yet—but we are powerful, too. Powerful enough to have spoiled his plans and dealt him bad setbacks two or three times now. And we’re not just a handful of peculiar children anymore. We have something like a hundred peculiars to fight him with—all our many allies who live here in the Acre, and who are reachable via the Panloopticon, not to mention all our abilities, all our experience, a dozen ymbrynes, and—and—”
“And Noor,” said Horace. “We have Noor.”
Noor’s head snapped as if she’d been startled from sleep. “Sure,” she said. “You have me, whatever good I am.”
“What good is she?” asked Addison.
“If the prophecy is to be believed,” Horace said, his voice deepening, “and given how much of it has already come to pass, I think it is, then Noor may be the most important asset we have in the coming struggle.”
“Not without the other six,” Noor said.
“I’m afraid I’m lost,” said Addison.
“You get used to it,” muttered Claire.
Horace went on. “The prophecy says that together, the seven foretold peculiars, of which Noor is one, may close the door.”
“Notice it says may,” said Enoch, “not will.”
“To end the strife of war, seven may seal the door,” Horace recited. “That’s the best translation we have. There’s also something about the ‘emancipation’ of peculiardom, but that part’s a bit fuzzier.”
“Seal the door to what?” asked Addison.
“We don’t know,” said Horace.
Addison stared him down. “Seal it how?”
“Don’t know.”
“And do we know where the other six are?” Addison looked around at the rest of us.
Miss Peregrine shook her head. “Not yet.”
His voice rose. “What do you know, for pup’s sake?”
“Not a great deal, as of now.”
“All right, you’ve convinced me,” said Addison, collapsing to the floor and covering his eyes with his paws. “We are all in very serious trouble.”
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
Before excusing herself to the emergency meeting of the Ymbryne Council, Miss Peregrine made everyone promise not to breathe a word of what they’d heard to anyone else in the Acre. “Not a soul,” she warned. “Until we have a solid plan of action, it will only spread panic.”
“And that’s what you’re going to do?” Hugh said with just a touch of sarcasm. “Develop a solid plan of action?”
Claire gave him a look that would curdle cheese.
“Yes, Mr. Apiston,” Miss Peregrine said patiently. “We are.” She scanned our faces. “It would be best if you all remained in the house until I returned. Do I make myself clear?”
I got the impression she was starting to regret telling everyone the news; that their reactions had been too scattered and frightened, and that we were all now filled with questions she was not
prepared to answer, which only made us more anxious. And anxious, highly independent peculiar children who were prone to ignoring her orders were a headache she didn’t need. So we were to be sequestered until further notice. Maybe a few hours, maybe longer, depending on how long the ymbrynes’ meeting lasted.
After she left there was some grumbling about how Miss Peregrine still didn’t trust us and treated us like children. Claire, who always took the ymbrynes’ side, argued that we were still children, and as long as we kept doing things like disappearing into the Panloopticon without telling anyone—she gave me a long glare—maybe we did deserve to be treated as such. That sparked a debate about physical versus actual age, and whether living in an unchanging loop for eighty years was anything like living in the real world, and what effect it had on the state of one’s mind and heart, at which point I started to feel overwhelmingly tired and snuck upstairs to sleep.
I collapsed in what I assumed was Horace’s bed—it was the only one that was made, the corners tucked tight, pillows fluffed. I lay on my side facing the window, watching ash fall gently while listening to a voice murmur from a small radio on the nightstand. A DJ was reading the morning news. I wanted to turn it off, but the knob was out of reach and I’d gone boneless with exhaustion. I wondered idly how a radio inside the loop could pick up a station from outside it, and then I heard the DJ say, “In rugby, the Devil’s Acre Cannibals crushed the Battersea Emu-raffes for their fourth consecutive win this season.”
The broadcast was coming from inside the loop. How long had Devil’s Acre had a radio station? The DJ had a voice like an oil slick, low and hypnotic, and I listened in sleepy fascination as he went on about peculiar sports for a while.
“In a stunning upset, Miss Flycatcher’s Aberdeen Eels were forced to give up the bog-swimming title they won last month against Miss Titmouse’s Killarney Blighters after judges decided that the Eels’ top swimmer having gills was a violation of the Poseidon rule. In local news, the lead and the understudy in Miss Grackle’s production of The Grass Menagerie have fallen ill with a touch of plague, so tonight’s performance has been cancelled. In weather, the desolations continue, with a squall of horned snails reported on Attenuated Avenue in the late hours of last night and flurries of ash expected through the afternoon. Still no definite word on what’s causing the disturbances, though plenty of rumors. Stay safe, peculiarfolk, it’s weird out there. And not in a good way. This is Amos Dextaire, and you’re listening to WPEC, the voice of Devil’s Acre. I’ve got a pile of wax to spin you through the morning. Let’s kick it off with a cozy old favorite of mine, the unsettling disharmonies of Krzysztof Penderecki’s ‘Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima.’”