by Ransom Riggs
Thirty seconds later we were out in the open courtyard, and Horace and Hugh were reeling Olive up into the air by a rope around her waist. Right away she became our invaluable eye in the sky, shouting back intel that my ground-bound hollows could never have gathered.
“There’s a couple to the right, past the little white shed! And another on the roof! And some running toward the big wall!”
They hadn’t scattered to the winds but were mostly out beyond the courtyard. With any luck they could still be caught. I called my six remaining hollows back to us. Spread four of them into a phalanx that would march before us and two behind us as a guard against rear attacks. That left my friends and me to sweep the space between and deal with any wights that might breach our wall of hollows.
We began marching, toward the edge of the courtyard. Astride my personal hollow, I felt like a general commanding his troops from horseback. Emma was at my side, and the other peculiars were just behind: Bronwyn collecting loose bricks to hurl, Horace and Hugh hanging on to Olive’s rope, Millard attaching himself to Perplexus, who was unleashing a constant stream of Italian profanities while shielding himself with his Map of Days. At the back, the ymbrynes whistled and made loud bird calls in attempt to recruit winged friends to our cause, but Devil’s Acre was such a dead zone that there were few wild birds to be found. Miss Peregrine had taken charge of old Miss Avocet and the few shell-shocked ymbrynes. There was nowhere to leave them; they’d have to accompany us into battle.
We came to the edge of the courtyard, beyond which was a run of open ground about fifty meters long. In all that space was just one small building, all that stood between us and the outer wall. It was a curious structure with a pagoda roof and tall, ornate doors, into which I saw a number of wights flee. According to Olive, nearly all the remaining wights had taken up positions inside the little building. One way or another, we were going to have to flush them out.
A quiet had settled over the compound. There were no wights visible anywhere. We lingered behind a protective wall to discuss our next move.
“What are they doing in there?” I said.
“Trying to lure us out into the open,” Emma said.
“No problem. I’ll send the hollows.”
“Won’t that leave us unguarded?”
“I don’t know that we have a choice. Olive counted twenty wights going in there at least. I need to send enough hollows to overwhelm them or they’ll just get slaughtered.”
I took a breath. Scanned the tense, waiting faces around me. I sent the hollows out one by one, sliding across the open yard on tiptoe, hoping light footsteps might allow them to surround the building unnoticed.
It seemed to work: the building had three doors, and I managed to place two hollows at each one without a single wight showing his face. The hollows stood guard outside the doors while I listened through their ears. Inside, I could hear someone with a high voice speaking, though I couldn’t make out the words. Then a bird whistled. My blood went cold.
There were ymbrynes inside. More that we hadn’t known were here.
Hostages.
But if that was true, why weren’t the wights trying to negotiate?
My original plan had been to break down all the doors at once and charge inside. But if there were hostages—especially ymbryne hostages—I couldn’t risk such rash action.
I decided to have one of the hollows risk a look inside. All the windows were shuttered, though, which meant I’d have to send it through a door.
I chose the smallest hollow. Reeled out its dominant tongue. It licked the knob, gripped it.
“I’m sending one inside,” I said. “Just one, to look around.”
Slowly, the hollow turned the knob. On my silent count of three, the hollow pushed open the door.
It leaned forward and pressed its black eye to the crack.
“I’m looking inside.”
Through its eye I could see a slice of wall lined with cages. Heavy, black birdcages of various shapes and sizes.
The hollow pressed the door open farther. I saw more cages, and now birds, too, in the cages and out of them, chained to perches.
But no wights.
“What do you see?” Emma said.
There wasn’t time to explain, only to act. I made all my hollows throw open the doors at once, and they burst inside.
There were birds everywhere, startled and squawking.
“Birds!” I said. “The room’s full of ymbrynes!”
“What?” Emma said. “Where are the wights?”
“I don’t know.”
The hollows were turning, smelling the air, searching every nook and cranny.
“That can’t be!” Miss Peregrine said. “All the kidnapped ymbrynes are right here.”
“Then what are these birds?” I said.
Then, in a scratchy parrot voice, I heard one sing, “Run, rabbit, run! Run, rabbit, run!” And I realized: these were not ymbrynes. These were parrots. And they were ticking.
“HIT THE DIRT!” I shouted, and we all dove to the ground behind the courtyard wall, the hollow pitching backward and taking me with it.
I flung my hollows at the doors but the parrot-bombs went off before they could get through them, ten at once, obliterating the building and the hollows in a terrible clap of thunder. As dirt and brick and bits of building flew through the courtyard and rained down on us, I felt the hollows’ signals go dead together, all but one blacking from my mind.
A cloud of smoke and feathers blew over the wall. The peculiars and ymbrynes were streaked with dirt, coughing, checking one another for holes. I was in shock, or something like it, my eyes locked on a splattered patch of ground where a bit of pulped and quivering hollowgast had been flung. For an hour my mind had been stretching to accommodate twelve of them, and their sudden death had created a disorienting vacuum that left me feeling dizzy and strangely bereft. But crisis has a way of focusing the mind, and what happened next had my last remaining hollow and me sitting bolt upright.
From beyond the wall came the sound of many voices shouting together—a great and rising battle cry—and beneath it a thunder of stampeding boots. Everyone froze and looked at me, dread furrowing their faces.
“What is that?” said Emma.
“Let me see,” I said, and crawled away from my hollow to peer around the edge of the wall.
A horde of wights was charging toward us across the smoking ground. Twenty of them in a cluster, running with rifles and pistols raised, their white eyes and white teeth shining. They were unscathed by the explosion, having escaped, I assumed, into some underground shelter. We’d been lured into a trap, of which the parrot bombs were only the first component. Now that our best weapon had been stripped from us, the wights were making their final assault.
There was a panicked scramble as others looked around the wall to see the charging horde for themselves.
“What do we do?” cried Horace.
“We fight!” said Bronywn. “Give ’em everything we’ve got!”
“No, we must run while we can!” said Miss Avocet, whose bent back and deeply lined face made it hard to imagine her running from anything. “We can’t afford to lose another peculiar life!”
“Excuse me, but I was asking Jacob,” said Horace. “He got us this far, after all …”
Instinctively I looked to Miss Peregrine, whom I considered the final authority on matters of authority. She returned my gaze and nodded. “Yes,” she said, “I think Mr. Portman should decide. Quickly, though, or the wights will make the decision for you.”
I nearly protested. My hollows were all dead but one—but I suppose this was Miss Peregrine’s way of saying she believed in me, hollows or no. Anyway, what we should do seemed obvious. In a hundred years, the peculiars had never been so close to destroying the wight menace, and if we ran away now, I knew that chance may never come again. My friends’ faces were scared but determined—ready, I thought, to risk their lives for a chance to finally eradicate t
he wight scourge.
“We fight,” I said. “We’ve come too far to give up now.”
If there was someone among us who would rather have fled, they stayed quiet. Even the ymbrynes, who had sworn oaths to keep us safe, didn’t argue. They knew what sort of fate awaited any of us who were recaptured.
“You give the word,” said Emma.
I craned my neck around the wall. The wights were closing fast, no more than a hundred feet away now. But I wanted them closer still—close enough that we might easily knock the guns from their hands.
Shots rang out. A piercing scream came from above.
“Olive!” Emma shouted. “They’re shooting at Olive!”
We’d left the poor girl hanging up there. The wights were taking potshots at her while she squealed and waved her limbs like a starfish. There was no time to reel her in, but we couldn’t just leave her for target practice.
“Let’s give them something better to shoot at,” I said. “Ready?”
Their answer was resounding and affirmative. I shimmied onto the back of my crouched hollow. “LET’S GO!” I shouted.
The hollow leapt to its feet, nearly bucking me off, then launched forward like a racehorse at the starting gun. We burst from behind the wall, the hollow and I leading the charge, my friends and our ymbrynes close behind. I let out a screaming war cry, not so much to scare the wights as to tear down the fear that was clawing at me, and my friends did the same. The wights balked, and for a moment they couldn’t seem to decide whether to keep charging or stop and shoot at us. That bought the hollow and me enough time to clear much of the open ground that separated us.
It didn’t take long for the wights to make up their minds. They stopped, leveled their guns at us like a firing squad, and let loose a volley of bullets. They whizzed around me, pocking the ground, lighting up my pain receptors as they slammed into the hollow. Praying it hadn’t been hit anywhere vital, I sank low to shield myself behind its body and urged it forward, faster, using its tongues like extra legs to speed us on.
The hollow and I closed the remaining gap in just a few seconds, my friends close behind. Then we were among them, fighting hand-to-hand, and the advantage was ours. While I concentrated on knocking the guns out of the wights’ hands, my friends put their peculiar talents to good use. Emma swung her hands like flaming clubs, cutting through a line of wights. Bronwyn hurled the bricks she’d gathered, then punched and pummeled the wights with her bare hands. Hugh’s lone bee had recently made some friends, and as he cheered them on (“Go for the eyes, fellows!”) they swirled around and dive-bombed our enemy wherever they could. So did the ymbrynes, who’d turned themselves into birds after the first gunshots. Miss Peregrine was most fearsome, her huge beak and talons sending wights running, but even small, colorful Miss Bunting made herself useful, ripping one wight’s hair and pecking his head hard enough to make him miss the shot he was taking—which allowed Claire to leap up and bite him on the shoulder with her wide, sharp-toothed backmouth. Enoch did his part, too, revealing from under his shirt three clay men with forks for legs and knives for arms, which he sent hacking after the wights’ ankles. All the while, Olive shouted advice to us from her bird’s-eye view. “Behind you, Emma! He’s going for his gun, Hugh!”
Despite all our peculiar ingenuity, however, we were outnumbered, and the wights were fighting as if their lives depended on it—which likely they did.
Something hard crashed into my head—the butt of a gun—and I hung limp from the hollow’s back for a moment, the world spinning around me. Miss Bunting was caught and thrown to the ground. It was chaos, awful bloody chaos, and the wights were beginning to take the momentum, forcing us back.
And then, from behind me, I heard a familiar roar. My senses returning, I looked and saw Bentham, galloping toward the fight astride the back of his grimbear. Both were soaking wet, having come through the Panloopticon the same way Emma and I had.
“Hullo, young man!” he called, riding up next to me. “In need of some assistance?”
Before I could reply, my hollow was shot again, the bullet passing through the side of its neck and grazing my thigh, painting a bloody line through my torn pants.
“Yes, please!” I shouted.
“PT, you heard the boy!” Bentham said. “KILL!”
The bear dove into the fight, swinging his giant paws and knocking wights aside like they were bowling pins. One ran up and shot PT point-blank in the chest with a small handgun. The bear seemed merely annoyed, then picked up the wight and sent him flying. Soon, with my hollow and Bentham’s grim working together, we had the wights on the defensive. When we’d picked off enough of them that it became clear they were outnumbered, their ranks whittled to no more than ten, they took off and ran.
“Don’t let them escape!” Emma cried.
We tore after the wights on foot, on wing, on bearback and hollowback. We chased them through the smoking ruins of the parrot house, across ground stippled with catapulted rodents from Sharon’s insurrection, toward an arched gate built into the looming outer wall.
Miss Peregrine screamed overhead, dive-bombing fleeing wights. She pulled one off his feet by the back of his neck, but this, and more attacks from Hugh’s bees, only made the nine that were left run even faster. Their lead was growing and my hollow was beginning to fail, leaking black fluid from a half dozen wounds.
The wights crashed on blindly, the gate’s iron portcullis rising as they neared it.
“Stop them!” I shouted, hoping that beyond the gate, Sharon and his unruly crowd might hear.
And then I realized: the bridge! There was still another hollowgast left—the one inside the bridge. If I could get control of him in time, maybe I could stop the wights from escaping.
But no. They were already through the gate, running up the bridge, and I was hopelessly behind. By the time I passed through the gate, the bridge hollow had already picked up and tossed five of them across to Smoking Street, where only a thin crowd of ambro addicts was lingering—not enough to stop them. The four wights who hadn’t yet crossed were stuck at the bridge gap, waiting their turn to be flung.
As my hollow and I started running up the bridge, I felt the bridge hollow come online inside me. It was picking up three of the four wights and lifting them across.
Stop, I said aloud in Hollow.
Or at least that’s what I thought I said, though maybe something got lost in translation, and maybe stop sounds a lot like drop in hollowspeak. Because rather than stopping midair and then bringing the three kicking and terrified wights back to our side of the bridge, the hollow simply let them go. (How strange!)
All the peculiars on our side of the chasm and the addicts on the other side came to the edge to watch them fall, howling and flailing all the way down through layers of sulfurous green mist until—ploop!—they plunged into the boiling river and disappeared.
A cheer went up on both sides, and a grating voice I recognized said, “Serves ’em right. They were lousy tippers, anyway!”
It was one of two bridge heads that were still on their pikes. “Didn’t your mum ever tell you not to swim on a full stomach?” said the other. “WAIT TWENTY MINUTES!”
The lone wight remaining on our side threw down his gun and raised his hands in surrender, while the five who’d made it across were quickly vanishing into a cloud of ash the wind had kicked up.
We stood watching them go. There was no way we’d catch them now.
“Curse our luck,” Bentham said. “Even that small number of wights could wreak havoc for years to come.”
“Agreed, brother, though honestly I didn’t realize you gave a titmouse what happened to the rest of us.” We turned to see Miss Peregrine walking toward us, returned to human form, a shawl clasped modestly around her shoulders. Her eyes were locked on Bentham, her expression sour and unwelcoming.
“Hello, Alma! Fantastic to see you!” he said with overeager cheerfulness. “And of course I give a …” He cleared his throat aw
kwardly. “Why, I’m the reason you’re not still in a prison cell! Go on, children, tell them!”
“Mr. Bentham helped us a lot,” I admitted, though I didn’t really want to insert myself into a sibling spat.
“In that case, all due thanks,” Miss Peregrine said coldly. “I’ll ensure the Council of Ymbrynes is made aware of the role you played here. Perhaps they’ll see fit to lighten your sentence.”
“Sentence?” Emma said, looking sharply at Bentham. “What sentence?”
His lip twisted. “Banishment. You don’t think I’d live in this pit if I was welcome anywhere else, do you? I was framed, unjustly accused of—”
“Collusion.” Miss Peregrine said. “Collaboration with the enemy. Betrayal after betrayal.”
“I was acting as a double agent, Alma, mining our brother for information. I explained this to you!” He was whining, his palms out like a beggar’s. “You know I have every reason to hate Jack!”
Miss Peregrine raised her hand to stop him. She’d heard this story before and didn’t want to again. “When he betrayed your grandfather,” she said to me, “that was the last straw.”
“That was an accident,” Bentham said, drawing back in offense.
“Then what became of the suul you drew from him?” said Miss Peregrine.
“It was injected into the test subjects!”
Miss Peregrine shook her head. “We reverse-engineered your experiment. They were given suul from barnyard animals, which can only mean that you kept Abe’s for yourself.”
“What an absurd allegation!” he cried. “Is that what you told the council? That’s why I’m still rotting in here, isn’t it?” I couldn’t tell if he was genuinely surprised or just acting. “I knew you felt threatened by my intellect and superior leadership capabilities. But that you’d stoop to such lies to keep me out of your way … do you know how many years I’ve spent fighting to eradicate the scourge of ambrosia use? What on earth would I want with that poor man’s suul?”