A Map of Days

by Ransom Riggs

  “Wouldn’t the Ministry of Mapping be a better fit?” Millard replied. “Any invisible can sneak around and overhear secrets, but I’d wager my cartographic expertise is equal to anyone’s.”

  “It may be, but Intelligence is understaffed and Mapping is full up. I’m sorry. Now, please go report to Mr. Kimble in Intelligence, room three-oh-one.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Millard said, the excitement in his voice gone.He turned and walked the other way down the hall.

  Miss Cuckoo indicated a large, high-ceilinged office we were passing where half a dozen men and women were combing through stacks of mail. “Mr. O’Connor, I’m sure the Dead Letters Office would appreciate your help.”

  Enoch looked crestfallen. “Sorting undeliverable mail? What about my talent?”

  “Our Dead Letters Office doesn’t handle undeliverable mail. It deals with correspondence to and from the dead.”

  One of the workers held up an envelope smudged with grave mud. “Their handwriting is rubbish,” the man said. “And their grammar is even worse. It takes a regular scientist to sort out who these letters are meant for.” He tipped the envelope, and a small pile of worms and bugs poured out of it. “Now and then we’d like to go back to the source and ask them, but none of us can dead-rise.”

  “The dead write letters to one another?” Emma said.

  “They’re always asking after people and wanting to send news to old friends,” Enoch said. “They’re right gossips, half of them. If I have time, sometimes I’ll let ’em write a postcard before they go back in the ground.”

  “Think about it!” the man said. “We’re always shorthanded.”

  “I’m not!” said a worker in the back, and he raised one freakishly long arm, brushed the ceiling with his fingers, then began to cackle as we walked away.

  Miss Cuckoo was waving at us to hurry up.

  “Miss Bloom, I could easily place you in the Warden’s office. You would make an excellent prison guard for our most dangerous wights. But Miss Peregrine tells me you’ve developed another interest of late?”

  “Yes, miss. Photography. I’ve already got a handheld flash . . .”

  She held up her palm and sparked a flame. Miss Cuckoo laughed.

  “That’s very good. We will surely want qualified photographists to document things as we reestablish contact with the American colonies. For the moment, though, your pyrogenic skills are still most useful to us as a weapon, so I’d like to keep you on call for security emergencies.”

  “Oh,” she said, clearly disappointed but trying to hide it.

  Emma gave me a resigned look, like she’d been foolish to expect more. Her abilities with fire were so powerful that it put her in a box, peculiarly speaking, and I could see the limits of it beginning to gnaw at her.

  After a few minutes, everyone had been given a task that sounded, if not always super cool or vital to the cause, at least relevant to their peculiar skills. Except me. One by one, my friends peeled off to consult with whichever ministry official they’d been assigned to, and I was alone with Miss Cuckoo and Miss Peregrine. We came into a large conservatory, the walls a puzzle of windows suffocated from the outside by vines. The room was dominated by a huge black conference table embossed with the ymbrynes’ official seal—a bird with a watch dangling from its mouth, one talon pinning down a snake. This was the chamber of the Council of Ymbrynes, where they held their meetings and decided our futures, and I felt a strange sort of reverence, being there, even if it was only a temporary space. The only bit of decoration in the room was a series of maps tacked onto the lower windows.

  “Please,” Miss Cuckoo said, gesturing to the chairs arranged around the big table. “Sit.”

  I pulled back a chair—modest, upholstered in simple gray fabric—and sat. There was no gold anywhere in the room, nor any thrones, scepters, robes, or other such trappings. Even the ymbrynes’ decor choices were humble, meant to demonstrate that they didn’t think of themselves as better than the rest, and that the leadership roles entrusted to them were a responsibility, not an entitlement.

  “Please give us a moment, Jacob,” said Miss Peregrine, and she and Miss Cuckoo walked together to the other side of the room, each step of Miss Cuckoo’s heels a hammer blow on the stone floor. They spoke in hushed tones, glancing back at me now and then. Miss Peregrine seemed to be explaining something, and Miss Cuckoo was listening, brow furrowed.

  She must have something really big for me, I thought. Something so important, so dangerous, that she’s got to persuade Miss Cuckoo to let me do it first. Someone so young, so inexperienced—it’s unprecedented, I imagined Miss Cuckoo saying. But Miss Peregrine knew me, knew what I was capable of, and she would have no doubt that I could do it.

  I tried not to get too excited. I didn’t want to get ahead of myself. But my eyes began wandering the room, and when they landed once again on the maps, an idea began to form about what Miss Peregrine had in mind for me.

  They were maps of America.

  There was a modern one, several older ones from before Alaska and Hawaii were states, and even one so old that the country’s border traced the Mississippi River. That one was divided into several big swaths of color: The Southeast was purple, the Northeast green, most of the West orange, and Texas was gray. There were fascinating symbols and legends inscribed here and there—reminiscent of the ones I’d seen on Miss Peregrine’s Map of Days, and I started to lean out of my seat to get a better look.

  “A thorny problem!” said Miss Cuckoo.

  “What is?” I said, spinning to look at her.

  “America,” she replied, crossing the room toward me. “It has for years now been a terra incognita. A Wild West, if you will, its temporal geography no longer well understood. Many of its loops have been lost, and many more are simply unknown.”

  “Oh?” I said. “Why is that?”

  I was getting excited now. America—of course. I was the perfect peculiar to tackle a dangerous mission in America. It was my turf.

  “The biggest problem is that America has no centralized peculiar authority, no governing body. It is fractured and split between a number of clans—only the largest of which we maintain diplomatic relations with. But they are locked in a long-simmering conflict over resources and territory. For years the hollowgast menace acted as a lid on that pot, but now that it’s been lifted, we are concerned that old grudges could boil over into armed physical conflict.”

  I straightened my back and looked Miss Cuckoo in the eye. “And you want me to help put a stop to it.”

  When I looked up, Miss Cuckoo had the funniest look on her face, like she was trying not to laugh, and Miss Peregrine looked pained.

  Miss Cuckoo put a hand on my shoulder. Sat down next to me. “We had . . . another idea.”

  Miss Peregrine sat down on my other side. “We want you to share your story.”

  My head swiveled from one to the other. “I don’t understand.”

  “Life in Devil’s Acre can be hard,” said Miss Cuckoo. “Draining, demoralizing. The peculiars here need inspiration, and they love to hear the story of how you bested Caul.”

  “The Battle for Devil’s Acre is what the little ones all want to hear at bedtime,” said Miss Peregrine. “It’s even being adapted for the stage by Miss Grackle’s troupe of thespians—and set to music!”

  “Oh my God,” I said, mortified.

  “You’ll start here, in the Acre,” said Miss Peregrine, “and then travel to some of the outer loops, the ones hit hard by the wights but still occupied—”

  “But . . . what about America?” I said. “Your thorny problem?”

  “At the moment, we’re primarily focused on rebuilding our own society,” said Miss Cuckoo.

  “Then why did you tell me all that?” I asked her.

  Miss Cuckoo shrugged. “You were staring at the maps with such longing
.”

  I shook my head. “You said America was full of unknown loops. And there was fighting and trouble.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “I’m an American. I can help. So can my friends.”

  “Jacob—”

  “We could all help, once I teach them how to pass as normal. Hell, Emma’s ready now, and with most of them I’d only need a few days, maybe a week of focused lessons—”

  “Mr. Portman,” said Miss Peregrine, “you’re getting ahead of yourself.”

  “Isn’t that why you want them to learn about the present? Isn’t that why you brought them to live with me?”

  Miss Peregrine sighed sharply. “Jacob, I admire your ambition very much. But the council doesn’t think you’re ready yet.”

  “You only just learned you were peculiar a few months ago,” said Miss Cuckoo.

  “And you only decided you needed to help the cause this morning!” Miss Peregrine added.

  It almost sounded like she was poking fun at me.

  “I’m ready,” I insisted. “So are the others. I want us to work for you in America, like my grandfather used to.”

  “Abe’s group didn’t take orders from us,” said Miss Peregrine. “They were entirely self-directed.”

  “They were?”

  “Abe did things his own way,” Miss Peregrine said. “Our world has changed a lot since then, and we can no longer function in such a manner. In any case, the way Abe conducted business does not affect this conversation. All that matters is that the situation in America is still developing. Right now that’s all we can tell you. When we need your help there—and when the council thinks you and your friends are ready—we will ask for it.”

  “Yes,” said Miss Cuckoo. “But until then—”

  “You want me to be a motivational speaker.”

  Miss Peregrine sighed. She was starting to get exasperated with me, and I was starting to get angry. “You’ve had a hard day, Mr. Portman.”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” I said. “Look, I just want to do something that matters.”

  “He wants maybe to be an ymbryne?” Miss Cuckoo said, smirking.

  I pushed my chair back and stood up.

  “Where are you going?” asked Miss Peregrine.

  “To find my friends,” I said, and started toward the door.

  “One step at a time, Jacob!” Miss Peregrine called after me. “You have the rest of your life to be a hero.”

  * * *

  • • •

  My friends were still elsewhere in the building, discussing the details of their work assignments, so I sat on a bench in the busy lobby and waited, and while I was waiting, I decided something. My grandfather had never asked the ymbrynes’ permission to do his work, and I didn’t need their permission to continue it. That Abe had left his logbook for me to find was permission enough. I needed a mission. And to get one of those—

  “Omigod.”

  “Uhhhhhh. Are you Jacob Portman?”

  Two girls had sat down next to me. I tore myself away from my train of thought to look over at them, and was surprised to see only one girl. She was Asian, a bit younger than me, dressed in seventies-era flannel and bell-bottoms—and most definitely by herself.

  “I’m him,” I said.

  “Would you sign my arm?” she said, holding out one arm. Then she held out the other and said, in a deeper voice, “And mine, too?”

  She saw my confusion. “We’re a binary,” she explained. “Sometimes we’re confused for a dual-personality person, but we actually have two hearts, souls, brains—”

  “And voice boxes!” said her other voice.

  “Wow, that’s cool,” I said, genuinely impressed. “It’s great to meet you. But . . . I don’t think I should be signing body parts.”

  “Oh,” they said together.

  “Are you excited about Miss Grackle’s production?” said the deeper voice. “I can’t wait. She did one about Miss Wren and her animals last season. The Grass Menagerie.”

  “It was far out. Very groovy.”

  “Who do you think they’ll get to play you?”

  “Uh, wow, I really don’t know. Hey, would you guys excuse me?”

  I stood up, apologized again, and started quickly across the room. Not because I wanted to get away from them—well, not entirely—but because I had spotted someone who looked familiar in a way that made my brain itch, and I had to go and find out who he was.

  He was a clerk behind one of the lobby windows. A young man with close-cropped hair, deep brown skin, and soft features. I knew his face from somewhere but couldn’t quite place it. I thought if I spoke to him it might jog my memory. He saw me coming, snatched a quill pen from his ink stand, and pretended to be writing as I arrived at his window.

  “Do I know you from somewhere?” I asked him.

  He didn’t look up. “No,” the man said.

  “I’m Jacob Portman.”

  He glanced up at me. Unimpressed. “Yes.”

  “We haven’t met before?”

  “No.”

  I was getting nowhere. Engraved on the window was INFORMATION.

  “I need some information.”

  “About?”

  “An associate of my grandfather’s. I’m trying to get in contact with him. If he’s still alive.”

  “We’re not a directory service, sir.”

  “Then what sort of information do you give out?”

  “We don’t give it. We collect it.”

  He reached across his desk, then handed me a long form. “Here, fill this out.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” I said, and dropped it back on his desk.

  He scowled at me.

  “Jacob!”

  Miss Peregrine was walking toward me across the lobby, my friends trailing behind. In a moment I would be surrounded.

  I leaned through the window and said, “I do know you from somewhere.”

  “If you insist,” said the man.

  “Ready to go?” said Horace.

  “I’m starving,” said Olive. “Can we have American food again?”

  “So, what’s your assignment?” Emma asked me.

  As they buoyed me away toward the exit, I looked back at the man. He was sitting very still, watching me go, brow furrowed with worry.

  Miss Peregrine took me aside. “We’ll have a talk very soon, just you and me,” she said. “I’m very sorry if your feelings were stepped on in our meeting. It’s very important to me, and all the ymbrynes, that you feel fulfilled. But the American situation is, as we mentioned, a sticky one.”

  “I just want you guys to have faith in me. I’m not asking to be the captain of an army, or something.” I’m not asking for anything anymore, I thought, but did not say.

  “I know,” she said. “But please be patient. And please believe that if we seem overly cautious, it’s for your own safety. If anything was to happen to you—or any of you—it would be a disaster.”

  I had an uncharitable thought: that what she really meant was it would look bad if something happened to me, just like it would look bad if we didn’t help the reconstruction effort in a way that was visible to everyone in Devil’s Acre. I knew that wasn’t her whole rationale. Of course she cared about us. But she also cared about the opinions of people who were strangers to me, and what they thought about how I lived my life—and I did not.

  But instead of saying any of that, I said, “Okay, no problem, I understand,” because I knew there was no changing her mind about this.

  She smiled and thanked me, and I felt a little bad for lying to her—but not too bad—and then she bid us goodbye.

  The clock had just ticked past noon in Devil’s Acre. Miss Peregrine had some business left to take care of here, but ours was done for the day, so we were
to meet her at my house later on.

  “Go directly there,” she warned us. “Do not loiter, linger, dally, or dawdle.”

  “Yes, Miss Peregrine,” we chorused.

  We didn’t go directly. I asked the others if we could find a route that avoided some of the thickest crowds, and in the spirit of exploration and mild disobedience, they agreed. Enoch claimed to know a fast way that was almost sure to be deserted, and a minute later we were tracing the banks of the river, Fever Ditch.

  This part of the Acre had not been cleaned up like the center had been. Perhaps it was not cleanable. Devil’s Acre was a loop, so the basic environmental facts of the place would reset themselves daily. The Ditch would always be a brown and polluted ribbon of filth. What sun was able to filter down through the pall of factory smoke that hung above us would always be the color of weak tea. The normals who were stuck here, part of the endlessly repeating scenery, would always be the same miserable, half-starved wretches who peered suspiciously at us from the alleys and tenement windows we were now passing. Millard said that somewhere there must have been a map of all the murders, assaults, and robberies that took place the day Devil’s Acre was looped, so those dangerous places could be avoided, but none of us had ever seen it. Everyone knew to be careful when passing through the normal regions. For as long as we could stand the smell, we hugged the edge of the Ditch to avoid passing too close to the dark buildings.

  When they were not glancing nervously around them, my friends discussed their new assignments. Most of them sounded disappointed. A few sounded bitter.

  “I should be charting maps of America!” Millard grumbled. “Perplexus Anomalous is head of the blasted Mapping Department now. If the ymbrynes don’t think they owe us anything for all we did, he surely does.”

  “Then you should appeal directly to him,” said Hugh.

  “I’ll do that,” Millard said.

  Enoch, once his initial excitement had worn off, had realized that his job in the Dead Letters Office was about 5 percent dead-rising, 95 percent filing. “How can they stick us with grunt work, after what we pulled off in the Library of Souls?” he said. “We saved the ymbrynes’ hides. They should either let us have a nice long holiday, or give us shiny jobs with loads of underlings beneath us.”