by Ransom Riggs
“That’s where we used to sleep, until we came to live with you,” Emma said to me. “Ladies in that room, men in this one.”
We passed what had formerly been a dining room, now crowded with even more cots. The whole bottom floor of Bentham’s house had been turned into a shelter for displaced peculiars.
“Were you comfortable there?” I asked.
A dumb question.
Emma shrugged; she didn’t like to complain. “It’s certainly better than sleeping in a wightish prison,” she said.
“Not much better,” said Horace—who loved to complain and had sidled up to me the moment he sensed an opportunity. “Let me tell you, Jacob, it was awful. Not everyone takes their personal hygiene as seriously as we do. Some nights I had to plug my nose with camphor sticks! And there isn’t any privacy, nor any wardrobes nor dressing rooms nor proper washing-rooms, even, and not an ounce of creativity coming out of the kitchen”—we were passing it now, and through the door I could see a battalion of cooks chopping things and stirring pots—“and so many of these poor devils from other loops have nightmares that you can hardly sleep at night for all the moaning and screaming!”
“You’re one to talk,” said Emma. “You wake up screaming twice a week!”
“Yes, but at least my dreams mean something,” he said.
“You know, there’s a girl in America who can remove nightmares,” I heard Millard say. “Perhaps she could be of assistance.”
“There is no one in the world qualified to manipulate my dreams,” Horace said testily.
Emma’s letters to me had been so breezy and cheerful, always focused on the happy times and the little adventures they were having. She had never mentioned the living conditions here or their daily struggles, and I felt a surge of new respect for her resilience.
Sharon threw open the huge oaken door at the end of the hallway. Street noise and daylight flooded in.
“Stay together!” Miss Peregrine shouted, and then we were outside, plunging into the flow of bodies on the sidewalk.
* * *
• • •
If Emma hadn’t grabbed my hand and pulled me along, I might’ve stayed frozen where I stood. I hardly recognized the place. When I had last seen Devil’s Acre, Caul’s tower was a pile of still-smoking bricks, and wights were fleeing through the streets pursued by angry mobs. There were riots as addicts looted stashes of unguarded ambrosia and the wights’ collaborators burned buildings filled with evidence of their crimes. But that was a while ago, and it looked like the place had made great progress since then. It was still a hellhole at heart—the buildings were caked with grime and the sky was the same poisonous yellow it had always been—but the fires had been put out, the debris cleared away, and there were uniformed peculiars directing horse-and-buggy traffic in the crowded street.
More than the place, though, it was the people who had changed. Gone were the prowling, hollow-eyed addicts, the dealers in peculiar flesh displaying their wares in shop windows, the ambrosia-enhanced gladiators with light beaming from their eyes. Judging from their eclectic and era-spanning costumes, these peculiars hailed from loops across Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East—and from many different time periods, as well.
In their hunt for peculiar souls the wights had not discriminated, and their reach had extended much farther than I had realized.
What struck me more than their costumes was the dignity with which they carried themselves, in spite of their circumstances. They had come seeking refuge from damaged and destroyed loops. They had lost their homes, seen friends and loved ones killed before their eyes, suffered unimaginable traumas. But there were no shocked and vacant stares. No one dressed in rags. Each one of them had had a giant hole blown through their lives, but the street pulsed with determined energy.
Perhaps they simply did not have time to mourn. But I preferred to believe that, for the first time in nearly a century, peculiars could do more than just hide in their loops and hope. The worst had come to pass. Having survived it, there was much to do: They had a world to remake. And they could make it better.
For a block or two, I was so absorbed in staring at all of them that I didn’t notice how many of them were staring back. But then someone did a double take, and someone else pointed at me, and I could have sworn I saw my name form on their lips.
They knew who I was.
We passed a young boy hawking newspapers, and he was shouting: “Jacob Portman to visit the Acre today! Hero returns to Devil’s Acre for first time since his victory over the wights!”
I felt my face go hot.
“Why does Jacob get all the credit?” I heard Enoch say. “We were there, too!”
“Jacob! Jacob Portman!” Two teenage girls were following me, waving a piece of paper. “Would you sign this for us?”
“He’s late for an important meeting!” Emma said, pulling me on through the crowd.
We hadn’t gone even ten feet when a sturdy pair of hands stopped me. They belonged to a fast-talking man with a single eye in the middle of his forehead and a hat that read PRESS.
“Farish Obwelo from the Evening Muckraker. How about a quick photo?”
Before I could answer, he had turned me to face a camera—a giant antique that must have weighed a ton. A photographer ducked behind it and held up a flash. “So, Jake,” Farish said, “what was it like to command an army of hollowgast? How did it feel to win a battle against so many wights? What were Caul’s last words before you struck the blow that killed him?”
“Uh, that’s not exactly how it—”
The camera flashed, and for an instant I was blind. Then another pair of hands were on me—this time Miss Peregrine’s, dragging me away. “Don’t speak to the press,” she hissed in my ear, “about anything, but especially not about what happened in the Library of Souls!”
“Why?” I said. “What do they think happened?”
She didn’t answer. Couldn’t, because suddenly I was being hoisted up over Bronwyn’s head, where she carried me like a platter, out of reach of the crowd. We made our way like that, Sharon forming a wedge with his arms to part the human sea and pointing up ahead—yes, there, we’re nearly there—to a gate in a tall iron fence. Beyond it rose a building of hulking black stone.
A guard waved us through the gate into a courtyard, and we left the crowd behind us. Bronwyn set me down and everyone crowded around as I brushed myself off.
“I thought someone was going to take a bite out of you!” Emma said.
“I told him he was famous!” said Millard, his tone both teasing and a little jealous.
“Yeah, but I didn’t think you meant—”
“Famous famous?” said Emma.
“Flavor of the month,” said Enoch, waving his hand. “Watch, they’ll have forgotten all about him by Christmas.”
“God, I hope so,” I said.
“Why?” said Bronwyn. “You don’t want to be famous?”
“No!” I said. “That was”—I wanted to say terrifying—“a bit much.”
“You handled yourself splendidly,” said Miss Peregrine. “And it will get easier. Once people become accustomed to seeing you, they won’t make such a fuss. You’ve been gone for some time, Jacob, and your legend has grown quite a bit in your absence.”
“I’ll say it’s grown. But what was that about me killing Caul?”
She leaned toward me and lowered her voice. “A necessary fiction. The ymbrynes decided it was best that everyone believe him dead.”
“Well, isn’t he?”
“Very likely,” she said, in a tone too casual to be completely believable. “But the truth is, we don’t know what happens inside a collapsed loop. No one’s ever escaped one to tell. Caul and Bentham may be dead, or they may just be . . . elsewhere.”
“Extra-dimensionally inaccessible,” Millard said.
“Permanently, of course,” Miss Peregrine hastened to add. “But we don’t want the public—or the few wights who have managed to evade us—to have any doubt. Or to get any strange ideas about rescuing him.”
“So, congratulations, you killed Caul, too,” Enoch said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
“Couldn’t it have been one of us who killed him?” Horace whined.
“You mean, you?” Enoch sneered. “Who’d believe that?”
“Keep your voices down!” snapped Miss Peregrine.
I was still grappling with the idea that Caul was only very likely dead, or that anyone, even the super-monster he had become at the end, could survive something as violent as a loop collapse, when a slap on the back from Sharon almost knocked me down.
“My boy, I should be getting back. Please don’t hesitate to call for me if you need another escort.”
Miss Peregrine thanked him. He bowed deeply, then turned and left, his cloak swishing behind him dramatically.
We turned to face the dour building that loomed before us.
“So, what is this place?” I asked.
“It’s the heart of peculiar government, for the time being,” said Miss Peregrine. “Where the Ymbryne Council now holds its meetings and where the various ministries conduct their business.”
“It’s where we get our work assignments,” said Bronwyn. “We turn up here in the mornings, and they tell us what needs doing.”
“St. Barnabus’ Asylum for Lunatics,” I said, reading words carved into stone above the building’s iron doors.
“There wasn’t a lot of vacant real estate to choose from,” Miss Peregrine said.
“Once more into the breach, dear friends,” said Millard, and he laughed and nudged me forward.
* * *
• • •
The institution’s full name was St. Barnabas’ Asylum for Lunatics, Mountebanks, and the Criminally Mischievous, and all the inmates—most of which had been there on a voluntary basis, anyway—had run away in the chaos that followed the wights’ defeat. The asylum had sat empty until the Ymbryne Council, whose building had been encased in ice during a hollowgast raid and rendered uninhabitable, requisitioned it as their temporary headquarters. It was now home to most of European Peculiardom’s government ministries, and its miserable dungeons, padded cells, and dank corridors had been stocked with desks and meeting tables and filing cabinets. They looked no less like torture chambers despite the change in furnishings.
We strode through a gloomy entrance hall buzzing with bureaucrats and office workers, most wearing formal waistcoats and loaded down with papers and books. Built into the walls were an array of windows, each manned by a receptionist and marked with a department name: Temporal Affairs, Anachronisms, Normal Relations, Phono- and Photographic Records, Micro-management and Pedantry, Reconstruction Dept. Miss Peregrine marched us to the last window and announced herself.
“What-ho, Bartleby,” she said, rapping on the desk. “Alma Peregrine to see Isabel Cuckoo.”
A man looked up and blinked at her. Squeezed between his temples were five eyes, and pinched in the central one was a monocle. “She’s been expecting you,” he said.
Miss Peregrine thanked him and started back.
“What are you staring at?” he said to me, blinking with four of his eyes.
I hurried after the others.
There were several doorways leading off the entrance hall, and we passed through one into a smaller room. Inside were several rows of chairs and half a dozen peculiars sitting in them, filling out forms.
“Aptitude tests,” Emma said to me. “To see what sort of work you’re best suited for.”
A woman came striding toward Miss Peregrine, arms outstretched.
“Alma, you’re back!”
They traded kisses on the cheek.
“Children, this is Miss Isabel Cuckoo. She’s an old, dear friend of mine, and she also happens to be the ymbryne in charge of high-level reconstruction assignments.”
The woman had shining dark skin and a smooth French accent. She wore a dazzling suit of blue velvet with wide, winglike shoulders that narrowed to a fitted waist and was trimmed with bright gold buttons. Her hair was short, parted, and metallic silver. She looked like a rock star from the future, not a Victorian lady from the past.
“I’ve so looked forward to meeting you all,” she said warmly. “Alma has been telling me about you for so long, I feel like I already know you. You must be Emma, the spark. And Hugh, the auto-apiarist?”
“Pleased to meet you,” said Hugh.
She knew most everyone, and went around shaking their hands. Then she came to me.
“And you’re Jacob Portman. Your reputation precedes you!”
“So I’ve heard,” I said.
“He does not sound thrilled?” Miss Cuckoo said, turning to Miss Peregrine.
“He was caught off guard by all the attention,” Miss Peregrine replied. “He’s just come off a rather quiet time in the present.”
Miss Cuckoo laughed. “Well, his days of quiet are over now! If you’re willing to do a bit of work for a good cause, that is.”
“I want to help however I can,” I said. “What have you got for me?”
“Ah-ah!” She wagged her finger. “All good things in time.”
“I’d like to request something more than just day labor,” said Millard. “I think my voluminous talents are better suited elsewhere.”
“You’re all in luck. There are no unimportant assignments here, and there is no peculiar talent, however unusual, that cannot be made useful to the cause. Just last week I assigned a boy with adhesive saliva to a job fashioning unbreakable leg restraints. Whatever your talent, I’ve got the task for you. Yes?”
Enoch had his hand raised. “My talent is hypnotizing ladies with my good looks. What have you got for me?”
Miss Cuckoo flashed him a sharp smile. “Enoch O’Connor, dead-riser, born to a family of undertakers.” She smiled. “And has a cheeky sense of humor. I’ll remember that.”
Enoch grinned at the floor, his cheeks going red. “She does know me,” I heard him say.
Miss Peregrine looked like she was going to murder him. “I’m so sorry, Isabel—”
She waved it off. “He’s silly, but he’s brave. That could be useful.” She looked around at the rest of us. “Anyone else got a joke for me?”
No one said a word.
“Then let’s put you to work.”
She linked arms with Miss Peregrine and they strode together toward the exit, looking like sisters from different centuries. We followed them up a flight of stairs.
“Enoch, what’s gotten into you?” I heard Millard say. “She’s a hundred years your senior, and an ymbryne!”
“She said I was brave,” Enoch said, a dopey look on his face.
Suddenly he didn’t seem to mind having a job in the Acre.
“I thought I’d never understand boys,” said Bronwyn, shaking her head. “But now I think I’ve got it. They’re all idiots!”
* * *
• • •
We followed the ymbrynes down a gloomy corridor flickering with gaslights. “This is where the sausage gets made,” Miss Cuckoo was saying, walking backward to face us as she spoke. “The ministry offices.”
Every few yards there was a door, and each was labeled two ways: Signs original to the asylum were carved into the wood in bold block letters, and above those the ministries had tacked signs of their own, stenciled on paper. Through an open door that read both MISCREANTS and MINISTRY OF TEMPORAL AFFAIRS, I saw a man clacking away at a typewriter with one hand while holding an umbrella in the other, the ceiling dripping so badly I thought for a moment it was raining inside the room. Through the next door (PERVERTS/DEPT. OF INHUMAN AFFAIRS) a woman was using a broom to defend her lunch from a small horde
of rats. Emma, who was unterrified of most things but despised rodents, grabbed my arm.
“I’m surprised you chose this particular building for the ministry offices,” Emma said to Miss Cuckoo. “Are you comfortable here?”
Miss Cuckoo laughed. “Not at all, but that is intentional. None of our displaced wards are comfortable in Devil’s Acre, so neither should we be. This way, everyone is motivated to keep the reconstruction effort moving along efficiently, so we can get out of here and back to our loops as quickly as possible.”
I wasn’t sure how efficient a workforce could be if it had to spend half its time battling rats and dripping ceilings, but it was a noble sentiment. If the ymbrynes and officials had set themselves up in some golden palace, it would have looked bad. There was a certain honor in the rat battles.
“Now, as you can imagine, there is plenty of reconstruction work right here in London,” Miss Cuckoo was saying, “and in this peculiar labor market of ours, you are all very hot commodities. We need cooks, guards, people who can lift heavy things.” She pointed to Bronwyn. “There are several departments clamoring for Miss Bruntley’s help. Salvage and Demolition, the Wardening and Guardening force . . .”
I glanced quickly at Bronwyn, and I could see her smile fading.
“Come now, Bronwyn,” said Miss Peregrine. “That’s certainly better than clearing rubble!”
“I was hoping to be assigned to the expeditionary force in America,” Bronwyn said.
“There is no expeditionary force in America.”
“Not yet. But I could help create one.”
“With ambition like that, I don’t doubt you will,” said Miss Cuckoo. “But we must season you a bit before we send you to the front lines.”
Bronwyn looked as if she wanted to say more, and she might have if it were only Miss Peregrine she was talking to. But in front of Miss Cuckoo, she held her tongue.
Miss Cuckoo pointed to the space beside me, where Millard’s coat and pants bobbed along in the air. “Mr. Nullings, you have a plum job offer from Peculiar Intelligence—invisibles always make top field agents.”