A Map of Days

by Ransom Riggs

  “I never thought I’d say this,” Emma said, “but thank the birds for that little weirdo.”

  The yelling in the cafeteria seemed to be dying down. It wouldn’t be long before all those people remembered to chase us.

  “We’ll thank him later,” I said, and I ran to the wall and pulled the fire alarm.

  * * *

  • • •

  “You turned them into zombies?”

  Emma was trying to seem angry, but was closer to laughing. We were in the courtyard, hidden for the moment among a surge of evacuating high school students.

  “It was such a waste of dead cats!” said Enoch. “They were just going to slice them up.”

  “For science,” Bronwyn said.

  “Sure.” Enoch made air quotes with his fingers. “Science.”

  “You were supposed to be in the PE fields,” I said.

  “Nobody would talk to us,” said Enoch.

  “To you, you mean,” said Bronwyn. “And he got bored and wandered off.”

  “I smelled sweet, sweet embalming fluid wafting through an open window, and I couldn’t help myself . . .”

  I nearly gagged.

  “Lucky for you, I actually accomplished something while he was playing with dead animals,” said Bronwyn. “I spoke to a very helpful young man who was in the school when the bathroom fire happened. He said there was a loud sound and a bright light, and he saw a girl running through the hall afterward, chased by a couple of adults.”

  “What did they look like?” I said.

  “The girl had brown skin and long dark hair, and the adults had red skin from burns and their clothes were smoking, and they were really mad.”

  “Did they get her?” I asked.

  “No. She got away.”

  “What was her name?” I asked.

  Bronwyn shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  I felt a hard tug at my sleeve. “There you are!” It was Millard, whispering because we were among so many normals. “I’ve been looking all over for you. Damn difficult. Some dolt pulled the fire alarm!”

  “That was us,” Emma said. “We needed to get out of there.”

  “We still do,” I said. At several points around the courtyard and the front steps were administrator types in polo shirts scanning the crowd, looking for us.

  The fire alarm stopped ringing, and a voice came over the PA system telling everyone to go back to class.

  “Let’s go, now,” I said. “While we still have all these people for cover.”

  “Split up,” Emma said. She pointed across the street. “Meet over there, behind those cars.”

  We divided, walked quickly out of the courtyard and across the street, and reconvened behind the row of parked cars Emma had indicated. The others crouched while I kept watch for adults in polo shirts.

  “Now, listen,” Emma said. “Jacob and I found something out, too.”

  “So did I,” said Millard. “I didn’t have any luck with the files and records, but I got to talking with a sweet young woman in the school office—”

  “You talked to someone?” I said. “Do none of you care if we’re exposed as peculiar?”

  “I’m a great deal more suave than anyone gives me credit for being,” Millard said. “Really, there’s no need for hysterics.”

  “So you talked to someone,” Bronwyn said.

  “Yes! A rather lovely young lady who I believe knows our subject—and where to find her.”

  “Okay, where?” Emma said.

  “I didn’t want to push too hard. The subject is a friend of hers. She knows the subject is in danger, and she’s understandably protective. I was gradually earning her trust when the blasted fire alarm sounded.”

  “So go back in there and finish earning her trust,” Enoch said.

  “We made arrangements to meet later. She wasn’t entirely comfortable discussing the matter on school grounds, anyway.”

  “I can’t believe you talked to someone,” said Emma, shaking her head.

  “I wasn’t seen, I assure you,” Millard huffed. “Does no one have any faith in old Nullings?”

  The girl had agreed to meet Millard at a café after school ended. We had a few hours to kill, so we hiked back to the car, got in, and discussed what to do next. Bronwyn wanted to see the sights.

  “We’re in New York! We should see the Liberty Statue! And other touristical things!”

  “We’re on a mission,” I said. “No way.”

  “So? Hollow-hunters never had fun on a mission?”

  “If they did,” said Millard, “they never mentioned it in the operations log.”

  Bronwyn crossed her arms and sulked. I didn’t care. Even if we’d had time to go to the Statue of Liberty, I wouldn’t have had the bandwidth to enjoy it. Bronwyn had this way of compartmentalizing experiences and setting stressful things aside, but I was too preoccupied with finding the girl and persuading her to accept our help. But even if we managed to do both, we still didn’t know where this loop ten thousand forty-four was. I understood why so many things had to be veiled in secrets and written in code, but I wished, just this once, that H could have just told me what to do and where to go in plain English.

  “What do we think this loop number means?” I said.

  We were sitting in the car, trying to figure out our next move.

  “Are all loops in America numbered?” Enoch asked. “If they are, we just need a directory of the numbers.”

  “That would be nice, but we don’t have one,” I said. “What we have are the documents I brought from home.”

  I fished them out of my duffel bag, and the others helped me look through them for anything I might’ve missed. We searched for the number 10044 on the handmade maps, the postcards from Abe, and on every page of the operations log. After an hour, my eyes were starting to cross and some of us were yawning. Even though we’d gotten eight hours of sleep the night before, it had barely made a dent in our exhaustion. I fell asleep with the operations log in my lap and my head on the steering wheel.

  I woke with a crick in my neck to Bronwyn yelling at Enoch.

  “Now I’ll have to launder my clothes!” she was saying. “It’s disgusting!”

  Before I could ask what she meant, I smelled it for myself—formaldehyde. Earlier I’d been too exhausted to notice, but Enoch stank of it, and now that we’d been shut in the car with him for a few hours, we did, too.

  “We must find a restroom where we can wash and you all can change clothes,” Millard said. He sounded panicked.

  We’d been asleep for a couple of hours, and there wasn’t much time left before we were supposed to meet Millard’s contact. He gave me the name of the café. I typed it into my phone.

  “It’s only a mile away,” I said. “We’ll be there in plenty of time.”

  “I hope so,” he said. “First impressions are everything!”

  “Wow, you must really fancy her,” Enoch said. “Caring how you smell? That’s almost love.”

  I started the engine and pulled away from the curb. Only then, as I was about to merge onto a busy road, did Millard say, very casually, “By the way, while you were sleeping I deduced the location of loop ten thousand forty-four.”

  “What?” I said. “Really?”

  He held up one of Abe’s postcards. I could only glance at it, but on the front was an illustration of an enormous bridge that spanned a river and a long, skinny island, which looked even narrower than Needle Key. I came to a stoplight, which gave me a chance to look a little closer. Written across the top was Queensboro Bridge and Blackwell’s Island, New York City.

  “Blackwell’s Island,” I said. “Never heard of it.”

  “Read the back.” Millard flipped the postcard over.

  I started to read aloud the note from my grandfather, but Millard sa
id, “No, here. The postmark, Jacob.”

  The postmark was a bit smudged and incompletely stamped, but you could just make out the date—twelve years ago—and at the bottom of the little black circle, a number.

  10044.

  “I’ll be damned,” I said.

  I passed the card to my friends in the back, who were clamoring to have a look. With one hand on the wheel and the other gripping my phone, I thumb-typed a search for the number 10044. Right away, a map popped up: a red line drawn around a long, skinny island in the middle of the East River, between Manhattan and Queens.

  The loop number wasn’t a secret code at all. It was a zip code.

  * * *

  • • •

  We drove the rest of the way to the café with the windows down to air the formaldehyde smell out the car, then freshened up in the bathroom of a fast-food restaurant. Millard cleaned himself from head to toe with faucet water and soap from the hand dispenser, and when he was feeling sufficiently presentable—which I found funny, considering his condition—we walked to the café. It was a dark, cozy place that felt like someone’s living room, with old couches and Christmas lights strung between rafters and a bar at one end where a big coffee grinder was whirring away. The room was half empty, and I noticed the girl immediately, sitting at a table in the corner. She had wavy brown hair and wore a black beret and army pants. An arty type, I thought. She was nursing a giant coffee and listening to something on her phone with one earbud. When we came through the door, her head cocked in our direction.

  Millard led us over to the table.

  “Lilly?”

  “Millard,” she said, and looked up—but not quite at—Millard.

  “These are my friends,” Millard said. “The ones I was telling you about.”

  We traded hellos and sat down. I was trying to figure out why she didn’t seem perturbed that a voice was emanating from thin air.

  “What are you listening to?” Millard asked her.

  “See for yourself.”

  The second earbud, which had been lying on the table, began to float as Millard inserted it into his ear. While he listened, two things came to my attention: the thin white cane that was leaning against her chair, and Lilly’s eyes, which never came to rest on any of our faces.

  Emma nudged me and we traded surprised looks.

  “He did say he hadn’t been seen,” she murmured.

  “Ahh!” Millard said, with what must have been a look of rapture. “I haven’t heard this piece in years. Segovia, yes?”

  “Very good!” said Lilly.

  “That,” Millard said, “is one of the greatest pieces of music ever written.”

  “It’s not every day that I meet another classical guitar geek. Nobody my age knows anything about real music.”

  “Me, neither. And I’m ninety-seven.”

  Emma scowled at Millard and mouthed, WHY?

  Lilly chuckled and ran her fingers along Millard’s forearm. “Pretty smooth skin for a nonagenarian.”

  “The body is young, but the soul . . .”

  “I know exactly what you mean,” she said.

  It was starting to feel like we were intruding on a date.

  “Hey,” Enoch more or less shouted, “you’re blind!”

  At which Lilly burst out laughing. “Uh, yeah.”

  “Oh, shut up, Enoch,” said Bronwyn.

  “Millard, you old dog!” said Enoch, laughing.

  “I must apologize,” said Millard. “There’s something the matter with Enoch’s brain. Whatever enters it slips out instantly through his mouth.”

  “You okay, Lil?” the barista called over.

  Lilly flashed him an okay sign. “All good, Ricko.”

  “They know you here,” I said.

  “It’s practically my second home,” Lilly said. “I have a standing gig every Thursday night. Pop and jazz, though. No Segovia.” She nodded to a guitar case propped nearby, then shrugged. “I guess the world isn’t ready.” Her expression changed suddenly. Hardened a bit, as if she had remembered something unpleasant. “Millard says you’re looking for someone.”

  “We’re looking for the girl who . . . who burned those two men,” said Bronwyn.

  Lilly’s face soured. “They attacked her. She was just defending herself.”

  “I didn’t mean to say otherwise.”

  “Hell of a defense,” said Enoch.

  “They deserved worse,” Lilly answered.

  “Can you tell us where she is?” Emma asked.

  Our questions were making Lilly tense. “Why do you care about Noor? You don’t even know her.”

  Noor. Her name was Noor.

  “We can help her,” said Bronwyn.

  “I’m not sure I believe you, and that doesn’t answer my question.”

  “We understand a little about what she’s going through,” I said, hoping I could approach the truth without going all the way to it.

  “Okay.” Lilly took a sip of her coffee. Swirled it a little. “What’s she going through?”

  I traded a glance with Emma. How much could we say? Even if we could trust Lilly, what would she believe?

  “Something’s happening to her that she doesn’t know how to make sense of,” said Bronwyn.

  “And she can’t go to her parents about it,” I added.

  “Foster parents,” Lilly said.

  “It might be affecting her body,” said Emma. “Changing it.”

  “There could be people watching her,” said Millard. “People she doesn’t know. And it’s frightening.”

  “You’re describing the experience of almost every teenage girl,” said Lilly.

  “And,” I said, leaning toward her and lowering my voice, “she can do things other people can’t. Things that don’t seem possible.”

  “Powerful, dangerous things,” Millard added.

  Lilly was still for a moment. Then she said very quietly, “Yes.”

  “We know what she’s going through because we’ve all been through it ourselves,” Emma said. “Each of us in our own way.”

  And then we told her, one by one, the peculiar things we could do. She listened quietly, nodding, saying very little. She did not seem frightened. She did not run away.

  Millard was the last to speak. I could sense his reluctance. That he liked this girl was obvious, and he didn’t want to let go of the fantasy he’d been entertaining for the last few hours, in which he was just a normal guy who maybe, maybe had a chance with her.

  “And I, my dear—this is Millard speaking—I regret to inform you that, well, like my friends here, I, too, am not completely normal . . .”

  Enoch shook his head. “Ugh, this is painful.”

  “It’s all right, Millard,” said Lilly. “I know.”

  “You do?”

  “You’re invisible.”

  I couldn’t see Millard’s expression, but I could guess at it—eyes wide, mouth hanging open.

  “How—how did you—”

  “I’m not completely blind,” she said. “A lot of blind people have a little bit of vision. I have about ten percent. Not enough to get by without this cane, but more than enough to tell when a voice is talking to me out of thin air! I gotta say, at first I thought I was losing it, but when you started asking me about Noor, it all began to make sense.”

  “I hardly know what to say,” said Millard.

  “I knew Noor couldn’t be the only one.”

  “My dear, why didn’t you say something?” Millard said.

  “I wanted to see if you’d admit it.” Lilly smiled. “I’m glad you did.”

  “I feel so silly,” said Millard. “I hope you don’t think me a cad.”

  “Not at all,” said Lilly. “You’ve got to be careful, I’m sure. But so do I.” She lowered her voi
ce. “You’re not the only people looking for her, you know.”

  “Who else is?” I asked. “Police?”

  “No. I’m not sure who they are. They came to her house, and to school, asking questions.”

  “What do they look like?” I said.

  “She’s blind,” said Enoch.

  “Yes, you keep pointing that out,” said Lilly. “They’re the people who came after Noor at school, after what happened with the lights in the auditorium. They cornered her in the bathroom, and she was forced to defend herself.”

  My mind went right to the vice principal-ish man and his cold-eyed companion. Could they have been peculiar? Or wights, even?

  “Noor says they drive SUVs with the windows blacked out,” Lilly went on. “They pose as authority figures. Cops, social workers, school faculty. She can’t trust adults at all anymore.” Lilly looked pained. “She’s the strongest person I know. And I’ve never seen her so scared of anything.”

  “We were sent here to help her,” Emma said. “I think we’re supposed to protect her from those people.”

  “So, you told me what you can do,” she said, “but who are you?”

  “We’re Miss Peregrine’s peculiar children,” said Bronwyn.

  “You know what,” said Enoch. “That doesn’t sound quite right anymore.”

  “We don’t know what we’re called yet,” I said. “But my grandfather was in . . . sort of like the FBI, for people like us? And we’re taking over.”

  “Oddfellows,” said Lilly. “The Oddfellows . . . League of . . . Defense.”

  “It spells O-L-D,” said Bronwyn.

  “Did she just make up a name for us?” said Bronwyn. “On the spot?”

  “I like it,” said Millard.

  “Of course you do,” said Enoch.

  “If we can’t find your friend and help her, we won’t need a fancy name,” said Emma. “We’ll be back in the Acre getting punished for the rest of our natural lives.”

  “Can you take us to her?” I asked.

  “She’s in hiding,” said Lilly. “But I can send her a message to ask if she’ll meet you.”

  Just then, through the café’s front window, I saw a black-tinted SUV roll by very slowly. The passenger window was rolled down a few inches, and inside I could see someone in mirrored glasses, scanning the neighborhood.