by Ransom Riggs
“Where’s the fun in that?” said Enoch.
Miss Peregrine gave him a withering look.
I made the hollow let me go, and with Emma’s help I limped through the door and into the observation room. My friends were all there—all but Fiona. Ranged along the walls and resting on office chairs, I could see pale, frightened faces watching me. The ymbrynes.
But before I could go to them, my friends blocked my way. They threw their arms around me, holding up my tottering body with their embraces. I gave in to it. I hadn’t felt anything so sweet in a long time. Then Addison came trotting up as nobly as he could with two hurt paws, and I broke away to greet him.
“That’s twice now you’ve saved me,” I said, putting a hand on his furry head. “I don’t know how I’ll ever repay you.”
“You can start by getting us out of this bloody loop,” he growled. “I’m sorry I ever crossed that bridge!”
Those who heard him laughed. Maybe it was his canine nature, but Addison had no filter; he always said just what he meant.
“That stunt you pulled with the truck was one of the bravest things I ever saw,” I said.
“I was captured the minute I got inside the compound. I’m afraid I let you all down.”
There was a sudden, loud boom from outside the heavy door. The room shook. Small items tumbled off shelves.
“The wights are trying to blow in the door,” Miss Peregrine explained. “They’ve been at it for some time.”
“We’ll deal with them,” I said. “But first I want to know who’s unaccounted for. Things will get out of hand when we open that door, so if there are peculiars elsewhere in this compound who need rescuing, I want to keep them in mind as we go into battle.”
It was so dark and crowded that we resorted to a roll call. I called our friends’ names twice, just to make doubly sure they were all here. Then I asked after the peculiars who’d been snatched from Miss Wren’s ice house alongside us: the clown (thrown into the chasm, Olive told us through hitching sobs, for refusing orders from the wights), the folding man (left on the Underground in grave condition), telekinetic Melina (upstairs and unconscious, having had some of her soul drained), and the pale brothers (same). Then there were the kids Miss Wren had rescued: the plain-looking boy in the floppy hat and the frizzy-haired snake-charmer girl. Bronwyn said she’d seen them being led off to another part of the compound, where other peculiars were being held.
Lastly, we counted the ymbrynes. There was Miss Peregrine, of course, whose side the kids had not left since they were reunited. There was so much I wanted to talk with her about. All that had happened to us since we last saw her. All that had happened to her. Though there was no time to say any of it, something did pass between us, in the brief moments our eyes would meet in passing. She regarded Emma and me with a certain pride and wonder. I trust you, her eyes said.
But Miss Peregrine, as deeply glad as we were to see her, wasn’t the only ymbryne we had to be concerned about. There were twelve in all. She introduced her friends: Miss Wren, whom Emma had cut down from the ceiling, was wounded but coherent. Miss Glassbill was still staring in her vague and mindless way. The eldest, Miss Avocet, who hadn’t been seen since she and Miss Peregrine were kidnapped together on Cairnholm, occupied a chair near the door. Miss Bunting, Miss Treecreeper, and several others fussed over her, adjusting blankets around her shoulders.
Nearly all of them looked frightened, which seemed distinctly unymbrynelike. They were supposed to be our elders and our leaders, but they’d been in captivity here for weeks, and they had seen things and had things done to them that had left them shell-shocked. (They also didn’t share my friends’ confidence in my ability to control a dozen hollowgast and were keeping as far away from my creatures as the dimensions of the room would allow.)
At the end of it, there was still one person among us who hadn’t been named: a bearded, small-statured man who stood silently by the ymbrynes, watching us through dark glasses.
“And who’s this?” I said. “A wight?”
The man became incensed. “No!” He tore off the glasses to show us his eyes, which were severely crossed. “I am heem!” he said, his accent thick and Italian. There was a large, leather-bound book on a table next to him, and he pointed to it, as if this somehow explained his identity.
I felt a hand on my arm. It was Millard, invisible now, his suit of stripes removed. “Allow me to introduce history’s foremost temporal cartographer,” he said grandly. “Jacob, this is Perplexus Anomalous.”
“Buongiorno,” said Perplexus. “How do you do.”
“It’s an honor to meet you,” I said.
“Yes,” he said, nose rising in the air. “It is.”
“What’s he doing here?” I whispered to Millard. “And how is he still alive?”
“Caul found him living in some fourteenth-century loop in Venice that no one knew existed. He’s been here two days, though, which means he could age forward very soon.”
As I had come to understand such things, Perplexus was in danger of aging forward because the loop he’d been living in was considerably older than the one we were in now, and the difference between those times would eventually catch up with him.
“I’m your biggest fan!” Millard said to Perplexus. “I have all your maps …”
“Yes, you tell me already,” Perplexus said. “Grazie.”
“None of that explains what he’s doing here,” said Emma.
“Perplexus wrote about finding the Library of Souls in his journals,” said Millard, “so Caul tracked him down, kidnapped him, and made him tell where it was.”
“I made oath of blood to never say nothing,” Perplexus said miserably. “Now I am cursed forever!”
“I want to get Perplexus back to his loop before he ages,” said Millard. “I won’t be responsible for the loss of peculiardom’s greatest living treasure!”
From outside the door came another boom, this one even bigger and louder than before. The room trembled and pebbly bits of rock rained from the ceiling.
“We’ll do our best, dear,” Miss Peregrine said. “But we’ve got other things to see about first.”
* * *
We quickly hatched a plan of action, such as it was: throw open the big door and use my hollows to clear the way. They were expendable, seemed in good working order, and my connection with them was only growing stronger. As for what could go wrong, I dared not even wonder. We would find Caul if we could, but our priority was escaping the compound alive.
I brought my hollows into the little room. Everyone gave them a wide berth, pressing their backs to the walls and their hands over their noses as the creatures shuffled past and gathered round the heavy door. The largest hollow knelt down and I saddled myself to him once more, which made me so tall I had to hunch forward to keep my head from scraping the ceiling.
We could hear the voices of wights outside in the corridor. No doubt they were planting another bomb. We decided to wait until they set it off before going out, so we stood by, waiting, a taut silence filling the room.
Finally, Bronwyn broke the tension. “I think Mr. Jacob should say something to all of us.”
“Like what?” I said, making my hollow turn so I was facing everyone.
“Well, you’re about to lead us into battle,” said Bronwyn. “Something leader-ly.”
“Something inspiring,” said Hugh.
“Something that’ll make us less terrified,” said Horace.
“That’s a lot of pressure,” I said, feeling a bit self-conscious. “I don’t know if this will make anyone less terrified, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about. I’ve only known you for a few weeks, but it feels like so much longer than that. You’re the best friends I’ve ever had. And it’s weird to think that just a couple of months ago I was back at home, and I didn’t even know you were real. And I still had my grandfather.”
There were noises outside in the hall, muffled voices, the thud of something metal be
ing dropped on the ground.
I continued, louder. “I miss my grandfather every day, but a very smart friend once told me that everything happens for a reason. If I hadn’t lost him, well, I never would’ve found you. So I guess I had to lose one part of my family to find another. Anyway, that’s how you make me feel. Like family. Like one of you.”
“You are one of us,” Emma said. “You’re our family.”
“We love you, Jacob,” said Olive.
“It’s been quite something knowing you, Mr. Portman,” Miss Peregrine said. “You would’ve made your grandfather very proud.”
“Thanks,” I said, getting emotional and a bit embarrassed.
“Jacob?” said Horace. “May I give you something?”
“Of course,” I said.
The others, sensing that something private was unfolding between us, began to murmur amongst themselves.
Horace came as close to the hollow as he could bear and, trembling slightly, held out a folded square of cloth. I took it, reaching down from my high place on the hollow’s back.
“It’s a scarf,” said Horace. “Miss P was able to smuggle me a pair of needles, and I knitted it while I was in my cell. I reckon that making it kept me from going mad in there.”
I thanked him and unfolded it. The scarf was simple and gray with knotted tassels on the ends, but it was well made and even had my initials monogrammed in one corner. JP.
“Wow, Horace, it’s …”
“It’s no great work of art. If I’d had my book of patterns I could’ve done better.”
“It’s amazing,” I said. “But how did you know you’d even see me again?”
“I had a dream,” he said, smiling coyly. “Will you wear it? I know it isn’t cold, but … for luck?”
“Of course,” I said, and wrapped it clumsily around my neck.
“No, that’ll never stay on. Like this.” He showed me how to fold it in half lengthwise, then loop it around my neck and back through itself so that it knotted perfectly at my throat and the loose ends hung neatly down my shirt. Not exactly battle-wear, but I didn’t see the harm.
Emma sidled up to us. “Did you dream about anything besides men’s fashion?” she said to Horace. “Like where Caul might be hiding?”
Horace shook his head and started to answer—“No, but I did have a fascinating dream about postage stamps”—but before he could tell us more, there was a noise from the corridor like a dump truck crashing into a wall, a sonic thud that shook us to the marrow. The big bunker door in the end of the room blew open, flinging hinges and bits of shrapnel into the opposite walls. (Thankfully, everyone had been standing clear of it.) There followed a blank moment while the smoke cleared and everyone slowly uncrouched themselves. Then, through the ringing of my ears, I heard an amplified voice say, “Send the boy out alone and no one gets hurt!”
“Somehow I don’t believe them,” said Emma.
“Definitely not,” said Horace.
“Don’t even think about it, Mr. Portman,” said Miss Peregrine.
“I wasn’t,” I replied. “Is everyone ready?”
Murmurs of assent. I moved the hollows to either side of the door, their great jaws hinging open, tongues at the ready. I was about to launch my surprise attack when I heard Caul’s voice through a PA in the hallway: “They have control of the hollows! Fall back, men! Defensive positions!”
“Damn him!” Emma cried.
The sound of retreating boots filled the corridor. Our surprise attack had been spoiled.
“It doesn’t matter!” I said. “When you’ve got twelve hollows, you don’t need surprise.”
It was time to use my secret weapon. Rather than a welling-up of tension before the strike, I felt the opposite, a loosening of my full and present self as my awareness relaxed and split among the hollows. And then, while my friends and I hung back, the creatures began hurling themselves through the jagged, blasted door into the hall, running, snarling, jaws gaping, their invisible bodies carving tunnels in the curling bomb smoke. The wights fired at them, their gun barrels flashing, then fell back. Bullets whizzed through the open doorway and into the room where I and the others were taking cover, cracking into the wall behind us.
“Tell us when!” Emma shouted. “We’ll go at your word!”
My mind in a dozen places at once, I could muster hardly a word of English in reply. I was them, those hollows in the hall, my own flesh stinging in sympathy with every shot that tore theirs.
Our tongues reached them first: the wights who had not run fast enough and the brave-but-foolish ones who’d lingered to fight. We pummeled them, smacked their heads into the walls, and a small number of us stopped to—here I tried to disconnect my own senses—to sink our teeth into them, swallowing their guns, silencing their screams, leaving them gashed and gaping.
Bottlenecked at the stairs at the end of the corridor, the guards fired again. A second curtain of bullets passed through us, deep and painful, but we ran on, tongues flailing.
Some of the wights escaped through the hatch. Others weren’t so lucky, and when they’d stopped screaming we tossed their bodies clear of the stairs. I felt two of my hollows die, their signals blanking from my mind, the connection lost. And then the corridor was clear.
“Now!” I said to Emma, which at the moment was the most complex speech I could manage.
“Now!” Emma shouted, turning to the rest of our group. “This way!”
I drove my hollow into the corridor, clutching at its neck to keep from being thrown off its back. Emma fell in behind me with the others, using her flaming hands as signals in the smoke. Together we charged down the hall, my battalion of monsters before me, my army of peculiars behind. First among them were the strongest and the bravest: Emma, Bronwyn, and Hugh, then the ymbrynes and grumbling Perplexus, who insisted on bringing his heavy Map of Days. Last came the youngest children, the timid, the injured.
The corridor smelled of gunpowder and blood.
“Don’t look!” I heard Bronwyn say as we began to pass the bodies of dead wights.
I counted them as we ran: there were five, six, seven of them to my two fallen hollows. Those were encouraging numbers, but how many wights were there in total? Forty, fifty? I worried that there were too many of them to kill and too many of us to protect, and that aboveground we’d be easily overwhelmed, surrounded, and confused. I had to kill as many wights as I could before they broke into the open and this fight turned into something we couldn’t win.
My awareness slid to the hollows again. Bounding up the spiral steps, the first one was up through the hatch—then searing pain, blankness.
It had been ambushed as it came out.
I made the next one out of the hatch pick up the dead one’s body to use as a shield. It soaked up a volley of gunfire, pushing forward into the room as other hollows leapt from the hatch behind it. I had to push the wights out fast, to get them away from the peculiars who lay everywhere in hospital beds. With a few lashes of our tongues, the closest ones were struck down, and the rest ran.
I sent my hollows after them as we peculiars emerged from the hatch. There were so many of us now, so many hands, that unhooking our bedridden brethren from their soul-drains would be easy. We spread out and made quick work of it. As for the chained madman and the boy we’d stashed in a closet, they were safer here than with us. We’d be back.
Meanwhile, my remaining hollows chased the wights toward the building’s exit. The wights fired wildly behind them as they fled. Snatching at their heels with our tongues, we were able to trip two or three, who met a quick but gruesome end once my hollows caught up with them. One wight had hidden himself behind a counter, where he was arming a bomb. A hollow rooted him out, then bundled both the wight and his bomb into a side room. The bomb went off moments later. Another hollow winked out of my consciousness.
The wights had scattered and more than half had escaped, diving through windows and out side doors. We were losing them; the fight was shifti
ng. We’d finished unhooking the bedridden peculiars and had nearly caught up to my hollows, which now numbered seven, plus the one I was riding. We were near the exit, in the room of horrible tools, and we had a choice. I posed the question to those closest to me—Emma, Miss Peregrine, Enoch, Bronwyn.
“Do we use the hollows as cover and run for the tower?” I said, my language coming back as the hollows I had to keep track of dwindled. “Or do we keep fighting?”
Surprisingly, they all agreed. “We can’t stop now,” Enoch said, wiping blood from his hands.
“If we do, they’ll just keep chasing us forever,” Bronwyn said.
“No, we won’t!” said an injured wight, who was cowering on the floor nearby. “We’ll sign a peace treaty!”
“We tried that in 1945,” said Miss Peregrine. “It wasn’t worth the lavatory paper it was written on. We must keep fighting, children. We may not have such an opportunity again.”
Emma raised a flaming hand. “Let’s burn this place to the ground.”
* * *
I sent my hollows racing out of the lab building, into the courtyard, after the remaining wights. The hollows were ambushed again and another was killed, going dark from my mind as it died. Save the one I was riding, by now all my hollows had taken at least a bullet apiece, but despite their wounds most were still going strong. Hollows, as I had learned several times the hard way, are tough little buggers. The wights, on the other hand, seemed to be running scared, but that didn’t mean I could count them out. Not knowing precisely where they were only made them more dangerous.
I tried to keep my friends inside the building while I sent the hollows to do reconnaissance, but the peculiars were angry and charged up, itching to get into the fight.
“Out of my way!” said Hugh, trying to push past Emma and me, who were blocking the door.
“It ain’t fair for Jacob to do everything!” Olive said. “You’ve killed near half the wights now, but I hate ’em just as much as you do! If anything I’ve hated ’em longer—near a hundred years! So come on!”
It was true: these kids had a century of wight hatred to work out of their systems, and I was hogging all the glory. This was their fight, too, and it wasn’t my place to keep them from it. “If you really want to help,” I said to Olive, “here’s what you can do …”