“What are you doing, man?” called Rich.
Darwen came to with a start and grasped the branch with renewed vigor. He had relaxed so much he had been close to letting go. He shook his head.
“It’s the chuffin’ perfume,” he said. “Sort of . . . distracted me.”
He gazed at the flower in disbelief, trying not to breathe in its fragrance. As he was considering the massive bloom, he caught a thrumming whir above him: a bird, as big as a pigeon but a bright, irridescent green color, and hovering like a hummingbird. It was watching him, and when Darwen met its gaze, he could see that it was not precisely a bird at all. It had slender arms and its beaked face held something human about the eyes that reminded him of the bat-like flittercrake that had led him to Mr. Peregrine. This, however, was something different entirely.
“Hello,” Darwen ventured, still clinging to his branch.
The bird thing stayed suspended in the air, its wings a blur of movement. Then it opened its beak, and in a shrill scream, it called, “Scrobblers!”
It swooped up and away, but there was suddenly movement all around the tree. More of the bird things were massing as if poised to attack.
“No!” shouted Darwen. “We’re not scrobblers! We’re people. I’m the mirroculist, Darwen Arkwright.”
But the bird things—at least a dozen of them—were already in their attack formation and swooping through the branches.
“Big deal!” shouted Alex. “You think we can’t swat off a few sparrows? Bring it on!”
But instead of diving right at their hands and faces, slashing with their sharp little claws or stabbing with those dagger-like beaks, the birds suddenly pulled up and soared away again. It took Darwen a second to realize that they had each dropped something, like a squadron of tiny bombers. He barely saw the tiny ball-like containers—miniature barrels—raining down around him, but as soon as they hit the tree and split open, he knew what they were, and he panicked.
“It’s nectar from the flowers!” he called as the perfume exploded on his hands and clothes like a cloud. Immediately he felt his mind gliding up and away on a tide of exotic fragrance. It was a glorious feeling. He was no more than mist, drifting up through the leaves, a bodiless essence carried on a wave like a dream, and all around him was color and scent and beauty and . . .
“Darwen, look out!”
Rich had clawed his way along the branch and was holding him in place, the crook of his arm clamped over his nose so that he was breathing through his shirt. Darwen was barely aware of him and still felt he was drifting, groggy and confused, like waking up at the dentist when he’d had a tooth removed.
“Focus,” said Rich, “and try to breathe through your mouth.”
The birds came again, but this time the boys were huddled over, their faces buried in their clothes. Darwen caught a whiff of the potent fragrance all the same and held his breath for as long as he could. Dimly, as through a fog, he saw Eileen and Alex up on the branches above them, one hand over their faces, the other waving the birds away. When he could hold it no longer, Darwen blew the air out of his lungs and took another shallow breath. Immediately he felt his head swim and darken, but he gripped the branch and tried to balance himself so that if he lost consciousness entirely, he wouldn’t fall.
And then, without warning, the attack stopped. The birds wheeled off into the upper parts of the tree and vanished from view.
“So these are zingers,” said Eileen, when they finally got used to the stillness. “Moth’s account was . . . incomplete.”
“Not what you’d call friendly, are they?” Rich muttered.
“Maybe with good reason,” said Eileen. “The scrobblers have been here. Look.”
She was pointing to where something hung from the bough she and Alex were straddling. It looked a little like an old lantern, forged from blackened metal and suspended from a heavy chain.
“What do you suppose that is?” asked Alex. “Let me see if I can get a better look.”
“Careful,” said Darwen.
“Relax,” said Alex, her old self again. “This is nothing. These branches are thick enough to walk on.”
And she stood up, arms outstretched.
“Don’t touch it,” said Darwen.
“I wasn’t going to touch it, smart guy,” said Alex, inching along the branch and rolling her eyes. “Hey, it’s making a noise. Can you hear that? A whiny sound like a mosquito or something. It’s getting higher as I get closer. You think it’s reacting to me getting near to—”
But she didn’t finish the sentence.
There was suddenly a crackle of energy, and a fork of miniature lightning shot from the lantern directly at her. It hit her squarely in the chest and seemed to flicker with electricity, convulsing as her hair stood on end. For a moment she stood there, dazed, and then, very slowly she tipped backward and fell.
Darwen threw one arm out, but he couldn’t reach and she dropped past him, down beyond the tree’s thick branches and away. “Alex!” he cried, but there was nothing he could do. She turned slowly as she fell, the ground racing to meet her and nothing to break her fall.
Chapter Fifteen
Making Friends
And then there was a blur of metallic green like a cloud plummeting from above toward Alex as she fell. The cloud moved impossibly fast, knifing through the air until it had reached her. It seemed to flicker and still itself, and now it wasn’t a cloud at all, but dozens of zingers that had attached themselves to her. Darwen wanted to shout out that they should leave her alone, but then he realized that her terrible fall had slowed and stopped. The bird things had caught her.
Then they were raising her up again, their tiny hands gripping her arms, her legs, her clothing, so that it wrinkled and hitched in ways that looked incredibly uncomfortable, though Alex’s face showed only a frozen shock, eyes wide, mouth open, body stiff as if the slightest movement might send her tumbling down again.
The birds raised her up to Darwen’s branch and lowered her into place.
“Is she okay?” called Eileen.
“Whoa,” said Alex in a thick, dazed voice. Her hair was smoking slightly from the electric charge. “I got bug zapped. Then the bugs rescued me.”
“Are you all right?” asked Darwen.
“I’m a little ticked,” said Alex thoughtfully, “but yeah. I’m okay.”
Slowly, carefully, she turned to consider the silent, watchful cloud of zingers, which still hovered in place just above her. “Thanks,” she said.
“You are not scrobblers,” said one of them. The voice was lilting and musical but so high that it was hard to listen to. “If you were, you would not fall prey to their traps.”
“True story,” Alex agreed.
“But you are large,” said the zinger.
“Hey!” said Alex.
“He’s just saying they thought we were scrobblers because we’re big,” Eileen said.
“Speak for yourself,” said Alex. She still looked dazed and a little scared. “So no more pelting us with perfume bombs, yeah?” Alex asked the lead zinger.
“No more for now,” said the bird thing, bobbing in place.
“I guess we’ll take that,” said Darwen. “We are looking for a friend of ours: Mr. Octavius Peregrine, a gatekeeper of the Guardian Council.”
“We know your Mr. Peregrine,” said the bird thing, “but we have no dealings with the Guardians. This locus is our own and none come here except those who mean us harm. The scrobbler devices have killed several of my people.”
“So rule one of wherever we are,” said Rich, glancing around. “Stay clear of the lantern things.”
“You think?” said Alex, shooting him a withering look that was somehow intensified by the wisps of smoke that still came off her head. “You smell that? That’s me burning. First scrobbler I see, he’s gonna get a pie
ce of my mind.”
“You don’t hang onto that branch,” said Rich, “and it won’t just be your mind they get pieces of.”
“The scrobblers are our enemies too,” said Darwen to the zingers, shooting Rich and Alex a look that told them in no uncertain terms to shut up. “They are threatening my world as they threaten yours.”
“It is not the scrobblers themselves who come here at night and plant their traps,” said the zinger. “They are too big to fit through, so they send the smaller ones.”
“Smaller scrobblers,” said Alex. “You mean scrobbler children?”
“The scrobblers have no children,” said the zinger.
“Well, they must at some point, right?” Alex persisted. “Else there wouldn’t be any adult scrobblers, would there?”
“Let it go, Alex,” said Rich.
“I’m just saying . . .”
“Let it go,” Rich insisted.
“The small creatures that plant the traps are not like scrobblers,” said the zinger. “More like insects.”
“Oh, great,” said Alex, looking hurriedly around as if one of them might be close by.
“Anyway,” said Darwen, “I’m saying we need to band together to protect Silbrica.”
“We can defend our locus,” said the zinger, puffing out his tiny chest and increasing the beat of his wings so that they hummed slightly.
“For now,” said Darwen, “I’m sure.”
He let the phrase hang there, watching as some of the zingers started to bob and weave in the air with agitation. “But they will come back,” he said. “They always do. And they will bring machines to protect themselves from whatever weapons you have. They want your land. We have seen it before. They will cut down your trees.”
The buzz of unease instantly became a torrent of angry zingers shouting their defiance and outrage as they flickered into Darwen’s face and back. They looked furious.
“For future reference,” said Alex, “let’s not talk about cutting their trees down.”
“It’s not us who will do it!” Darwen protested, but the zingers were clearly incensed. “It’s the scrobblers! We’re not them, remember?”
The zingers seemed not to hear him, and the more they chattered angrily among themselves, the more they seemed less like a flock of birds and more like a swarm of colossal wasps.
“I think we should go,” said Eileen.
“Just let me talk to them!” Darwen protested.
“I don’t think they’re in the mood,” said Alex. “Start climbing.”
They did so, one eye on the angry zingers, who were zipping around them, surely only moments from commencing another attack, and one eye on the black lanterns that hung from the tree branches like lethal fruit.
“Keep your distance and keep going,” said Rich, hoisting himself up onto the next branch. “The portal is about twenty feet up that way.”
And so they climbed, and the zinger swarm moved with them, their eyes bright with fury, their bills sharp as needles. But when they reached the portal, and the sense of failure and futility rested on Darwen’s shoulders like a heavy, sopping coat, he found he had to try one more time.
“Listen,” he said. “I’m sorry if I offended you. Really I am. But please, listen to me for a moment!”
The buzzing slackened off, and some of the zingers poised in midair to look at him. Darwen didn’t wait for them all to pay attention and started talking.
“I’m just warning you of what will come,” he said. “Not from us. We’re on your side. We want to protect Silbrica from the scrobblers, from Greyling. But to save you all, you may have to fight outside your locus. We have to band together. We have to take the battle to him.”
He paused. The sound and fluttering about had dropped to almost nothing. Above him, Eileen, Rich, and Alex were poised to squeeze through the tiny portal, but they were watching him closely.
“We do not leave our locus,” said one of the zingers at last. “We will defend our home to the end, however bitter, but we do not leave this place.”
“If you are going to live, you may have to,” said Darwen.
“Then we will die,” said the zinger. “But we will die fighting.”
Darwen looked into the bird creature’s earnest face for a long moment and then nodded. “If we can help you,” Darwen said, “we will.”
He nodded a farewell, and the zinger in front of him gave a fractional bow before turning and calling to one of the others, which flew forward, cradling something in its arms. The object was brass and no more than two inches long with holes at each end and a slit in the middle.
“This was left with us,” said the lead zinger. “Perhaps it will be useful to you.”
Darwen took it gratefully. It was the whistle Moth had mentioned.
“Thank you,” he said, but the zinger was already flying away. After a moment, the others followed.
“What does the whistle do?” asked Rich excitedly as soon as they had all made it through the portal. “I mean,” he said, “if it belonged to Mr. Peregrine, it must do something cool, despite what Moth said.”
“Maybe it creates portals,” said Alex.
Darwen doubted it. He put it to his lips and gave it a long, hard blow.
Nothing happened.
“Maybe it’s broken,” said Alex.
“It’s not,” said Eileen. “It’s just not that useful.”
“What is it?” asked Darwen.
“It’s like a dog whistle, but for flittercrakes.”
“Oh,” said Darwen, deflated.
“Those are the bird things with the ugly old man face?” asked Alex. “Yeah, let’s not blow it again. Those things give me the willies.”
Darwen pocketed the whistle and hung his head.
“Still,” Alex said, looking around the garden. “Better than nothing.”
Darwen nodded thoughtfully but kept silent.
“You did well, Darwen,” said Eileen. “I thought we were just going to leave with another enemy, but we left with an ally.”
“An ally who won’t actually fight with us unless the battle takes place in their tree,” Darwen said.
“An ally nonetheless,” said Eileen. “Right now we take our victories where we can find them.”
Again, Darwen nodded and said nothing, but this time, he smiled a little.
The sun was almost down in the gardens as they considered their next move.
“We could go back to the Great Apparatus and pick another portal,” said Alex, “though we haven’t really explored this area beyond the route to the house.”
“What’s that over there?” said Rich. “There’s a gravel path that leads through those trees.” He started along the path and the others followed, peering ahead through the low light, which dropped still further as they entered the shadow of the trees. “Hmm . . . it’s a building,” Rich murmured, answering his own question.
Darwen caught a glimpse of brickwork through the bushes ahead and thought at first that they had found their way back to the mansion. Quickly, however, he realized that they hadn’t—this was something quite different. Still, the scene felt oddly familiar.
The shrubs parted before them and there it was: a crumbling brick structure with leaded diamond-shaped panes of glass set into windows surrounded by flaking, faded frames. The edifice itself was a strange enough sight in the middle of the woods of Silbrica, but it was the hand-lettered sign that hung above the front door with its worn brass latch that made their mouths hang open in disbelief.
MISTER OCTAVIUS PEREGRINE’S REFLECTORY EMPORIUM:
MIRRORS PRICELESS AND PERILOUS
Darwen stared.
“Well, I’ll be,” gasped Rich.
Standing before them was the shop from the mall, exact in every detail, except that there was no mall, just more gardens,
the store sitting there as if it had been left by someone who didn’t know where to put it.
Darwen found that he was rushing to the front door and that, without saying a word, the others were doing the same. This was Mr. Peregrine’s shop . . . in Silbrica. There had to be a clue here, a portal, maybe, something that would get them to where he was now. . . .
But the shop was dark and empty. The little bell over the door jangled as they went in, and though the floor plan was the same, there were no mirrors, no sign in fact that anyone had ever been inside. It resembled a model or a film set, a shell that looked perfect from the outside but felt completely unreal up close.
Darwen slumped dejectedly to the floor by the counter. There was no antique cash register, no night-and-day clock, no messaging system like the one Mr. P had once used to alert his friends the Jenkinses that he was coming to visit. Darwen remembered that awful night at the Jenkins house and the things that had emerged from what had seemed to be just a kindly old couple. He wondered what had happened to the real Jenkinses and if they were being held somewhere with Mr. Peregrine. . . .
“Come look at this,” called Rich from the stockroom in the back.
Darwen’s heart quickened and he got to his feet, but Alex and Eileen still beat him there. Rich had his face pressed to a tiny window in the rear wall. Rich was staring at a series of distant silhouettes in the night.
“Those trees,” he was saying. “They look familiar to you?”
“This again?” said Alex, rolling her eyes and grinning. “You’re gonna lecture us on how your daddy would prune a crepe myrtle?”
Darwen hung his head.
“They’re not crepe myrtles,” said Rich. “They’re eastern red cedars.”
“Wait,” said Darwen, remembering something Rich had told him on only his second day at Hillside, a tale Rich had said attested to the school’s deep weirdness. “Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure,” said Rich. “And see how regularly spaced they are? Like they were deliberately planted like that.”
Darwen Arkwright and the School of Shadows Page 12