Hollow City

by Ransom Riggs

  “Now aren’t you glad we didn’t blow them up?” Bronwyn whispered to Enoch.

  “Oh, I suppose,” he replied.

  The Gypsy band struck up another song. We ate and danced. I convinced Emma to take a turn around the fire with me, and though I was usually shy about dancing in public, this time I let myself go. Our feet flew and our hands clapped in time to the music, and for a few shining minutes we lost ourselves in it. I was able to forget how much danger we were in, and how that very day we had nearly been captured by wights and devoured by a hollow, our meat-stripped bones spat off a mountainside. In that moment I was deeply grateful to the Gypsies, and for the simplemindedness of the animal part of my brain; that a hot meal and a song and a smile from someone I cared about could be enough to distract me from all that darkness, if only for a little while. Then the song ended and we stumbled back to our seats, and in the lull that followed I felt the mood change. Emma looked at Bekhir and said, “May I ask you something?”

  “Of course,” he said.

  “Why did you risk your lives for us?”

  He waved his hand. “You would’ve done the same.”

  “I’m not sure we would’ve,” said Emma. “I just want to understand. Was it because we’re peculiar?”

  “Yes,” he said simply. A moment passed. He looked away at the trees that edged our clearing, their firelit trunks and the blackness beyond. Then he said, “Would you like to meet my son?”

  “Of course,” Emma said.

  She stood, and so did I and several others.

  Bekhir raised a hand. “He’s shy, I’m afraid. Just you,” he said, pointing to Emma, “and you”—he pointed at me—“and the one who can be heard but not seen.”

  “Impressive,” said Millard. “And I was trying so hard to be subtle!”

  Enoch sat down again. “Why am I always being left out of things? Do I smell?”

  A Gypsy woman in a flowing robe swept into the campfire circle. “While they’re gone, I’ll read your palms and tell your fortunes,” she said. She turned to Horace. “Maybe you’ll climb Kilimanjaro one day!” Then to Bronwyn—“Or marry a rich, handsome man!”

  Bronwyn snorted. “My fondest dream.”

  “The future is my specialty, madam,” said Horace. “Let me show you how it’s done!”

  Emma, Millard, and I left them and started across the camp with Bekhir. We came to a plain-looking caravan wagon, and he climbed its short ladder and knocked on the door.

  “Radi?” he called gently. “Come out, please. There are people here to see you.”

  The door opened a crack and a woman peeked out. “He’s scared. Won’t leave his chair.” She looked us over carefully, then opened the door wide and beckoned us in. We mounted the steps and ducked into a cramped but cozy space that appeared to be a living room, bedroom, and kitchen all in one. There was a bed under a narrow window, a table and chair, and a little stove that vented out a chimney in the roof; everything you’d need to be self-sufficient on the road for weeks or months at a time.

  In the room’s lone chair sat a boy. He held a trumpet in his lap. I’d seen him play earlier, I realized, as part of the Gypsy children’s band. This was Bekhir’s son, and the woman, I assumed, was Bekhir’s wife.

  “Take off your shoes, Radi,” the woman said.

  The boy kept his gaze trained on the floor. “Do I have to?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Bekhir said.

  The boy tugged off one of his boots, then the other. For a second I wasn’t sure what I was seeing: there was nothing inside his shoes. He appeared to have no feet. And yet he’d had to work to get his boots off, so they had to have been attached to something. Then Bekhir asked him to stand, and reluctantly the boy slid forward in the chair and rose out of it. He seemed to be levitating, the cuffs of his pants hanging empty a few inches above the floor.

  “He began disappearing a few months ago,” the woman explained. “First just his toes. Then his heels. Finally the rest, both feet. Nothing I’ve given him—no tincture, no tonic—has had the slightest effect in curing him.”

  So he had feet, after all—invisible ones.

  “We don’t know what to do,” said Bekhir. “But I thought, perhaps there’s a healer among you …”

  “There’s no healing what he’s got,” said Millard, and at the sound of his voice in the empty air the boy’s head jerked up. “We’re alike, he and I. It was just the same for me when I was young. I wasn’t born invisible; it happened a little at a time.”

  “Who’s speaking?” the boy said.

  Millard picked up a scarf that lay on the edge of the bed and wrapped it around his face, revealing the shape of his nose, his forehead, his mouth. “Here I am,” he said, moving across the floor toward the boy. “Don’t be frightened.”

  As the rest of us watched, the boy reached up his hand and touched Millard’s cheek, then his forehead, then his hair—the color and style of which it had never occurred to me to imagine—and even pulled a little hank of it, gently, as if testing its realness.

  “You’re there,” the boy said, his eyes sparkling with wonder. “You’re really there!”

  “And you’ll be, too, even after the rest of you goes,” said Millard. “You’ll see. It doesn’t hurt.”

  The boy smiled, and when he did, the woman’s knees wobbled and she had to steady herself against Bekhir. “Bless you,” she said to Millard, near tears. “Bless you.”

  Millard sat down at Radi’s disappeared feet. “There’s nothing to be afraid of, my boy. In fact, once you adjust to invisibility, I think you’ll find it has many advantages …”

  And as he began to list them, Bekhir went to the door and nodded at Emma and me. “Let’s let them be,” he said. “I’m sure they have a lot to talk about.”

  We left Millard alone with the boy and his mother. Returning to the campfire, we found nearly everyone, peculiar and Gypsy alike, gathered around Horace. He was standing on a tree stump before the astounded fortune teller, his eyes closed and one hand atop her head, and seemed to be narrating a dream as it came to him: “… and your grandson’s grandson will pilot a giant ship that shuttles between the Earth and the moon like an omnibus, and on the moon he’ll have a very small house, and he’ll fall behind on the mortgage and have to take in lodgers, and one of those lodgers will be a beautiful woman with whom he’ll fall very deeply in moon-love, which isn’t quite the same as Earth-love because of the difference in gravity there …”

  We watched from the edge of the crowd. “Is he for real?” I asked Emma.

  “Might be,” she replied. “Or he might just be having a bit of fun with her.”

  “Why can’t he tell our futures like that?”

  Emma shrugged. “Horace’s ability can be maddeningly useless. He’ll reel off lifetimes of predictions for strangers, but with us he’s almost totally blocked. It’s as if the more he cares about someone, the less he can see. Emotion clouds his vision.”

  “Doesn’t it all of us,” came a voice from behind us, and we turned to see Enoch standing there. “And on that tip, I hope you aren’t distracting the American too much, Emma dear. It’s hard to keep a lookout for hollowgast when there’s a young lady’s tongue in your ear.”

  “Don’t be disgusting!” Emma said.

  “I couldn’t ignore the Feeling if I wanted to,” I said, though I did wish I could ignore the icky feeling that Enoch was jealous of me.

  “So, tell me about your secret meeting,” Enoch said. “Did the Gypsies really protect us because of some dusty old alliance none of us have heard of?”

  “The leader and his wife have a peculiar son,” said Emma. “They hoped we could help him.”

  “That’s madness,” said Enoch. “They nearly let themselves be filleted alive by those soldiers for the sake of one boy? Talk about emotion clouding vision! I figured they wanted to enslave us for our abilities, or at the very least sell us at auction—but then I’m always overestimating people.”

  “Oh, g
o find a dead animal to play with,” said Emma.

  “I’ll never understand ninety-nine percent of humanity,” said Enoch, and he went away shaking his head.

  “Sometimes I think that boy is part machine,” Emma said. “Flesh on the outside, metal on the inside.”

  I laughed, but secretly I wondered if Enoch was right. Was it crazy, what Bekhir had risked for his son? Because if Bekhir was crazy, then certainly I was. How much had I given up for the sake of just one girl? Despite my curiosity, despite my grandfather, despite the debts we owed Miss Peregrine, ultimately I was here—now—for one reason alone: because from the day I met Emma I’d known I wanted to be part of any world she belonged to. Did that make me crazy? Or was my heart too easily conquered?

  Maybe I could use a little metal on the inside, I thought. If I’d kept my heart better armored, where would I be now?

  Easy—I’d be at home, medicating myself into a monotone. Drowning my sorrows in video games. Working shifts at Smart Aid. Dying inside, day by day, from regret.

  You coward. You weak, pathetic child. You threw your chance away.

  But I hadn’t. In reaching toward Emma, I’d risked everything—was risking it again, every day—but in doing so I had grasped and pulled myself into a world once unimaginable to me, where I lived among people who were more alive than anyone I’d known, did things I’d never dreamed I could do, survived things I’d never dreamed I could survive. All because I’d let myself feel something for one peculiar girl.

  Despite all the trouble and danger we found ourselves in, and despite the fact that this strange new world had started to crumble the moment I’d discovered it, I was profoundly glad I was here. Despite everything, this peculiar life was what I’d always wanted. Strange, I thought, how you can be living your dreams and your nightmares at the very same time.

  “What is it?” Emma said. “You’re staring at me.”

  “I wanted to thank you,” I said.

  She wrinkled her nose and squinted like I’d said something funny. “Thank me for what?” she said.

  “You give me strength I didn’t know I had,” I said. “You make me better.”

  She blushed. “I don’t know what to say.”

  Emma, bright soul. I need your fire—the one inside you.

  “You don’t have to say anything,” I said. And then I was seized with the sudden urge to kiss her, and I did.

  * * *

  Though we were dead tired, the Gypsies were in a buoyant mood and seemed determined to keep the party going, and after a few cups of hot, sweet, highly caffeinated something and a few more songs, they’d won us over. They were natural storytellers and beautiful singers; innately charming people who treated us like long-lost cousins. We stayed up half the night trading stories. The young guy who’d thrown his voice like a bear did a ventriloquist act that was so good I almost believed his dummies had come alive. He seemed to have a little crush on Emma and delivered the whole routine to her, smiling encouragingly, but she pretended not to notice and made a point of holding my hand.

  Later they told us the story of how, during the First World War, the British army had taken all their horses, and for a while they’d had none to pull their wagons. They had been left stranded in the forest—this very forest—when one day a herd of long-horned goats wandered into their camp. They looked wild but were tame enough to eat out of your hand, so someone got the idea to hitch one to a wagon, and these goats turned out to be nearly as strong as the horses they’d lost. So the Gypsies got unstuck, and until the end of the war their wagons were pulled by these peculiarly strong goats, which is how they became known throughout Wales as Goat People. As proof they passed around a photo of Bekhir’s uncle riding a goat-pulled wagon. We knew without anyone having to say it that this was the lost herd of peculiar goats Addison had talked about. After the war, the army gave back the Gypsies’ horses, and the goats, no longer needed, disappeared again into the forest.

  Finally, campfires dwindling, they laid out sleeping rolls for us and sang a lullaby in a lilting foreign language, and I felt pleasantly like a child. The ventriloquist came to say good night to Emma. She shooed him away, but not before he left a calling card. On the back was an address in Cardiff where he picked up mail every few months, whenever the Gypsies stopped through. On the front was his photo, with dummies, and a little note written to Emma. She showed it to me and snickered, but I felt bad for the guy. He was guilty only of liking her, same as me.

  I curled up with Emma in a sleeping roll at the forest’s edge. Just as we were drifting off, I heard footsteps in the grass nearby, and opened my eyes to see no one at all. It was Millard, back again after having spent the evening talking with the Gypsy boy.

  “He wants to come with us,” said Millard.

  “Who?” Emma mumbled groggily. “Where?”

  “The boy. With us.”

  “And what did you say?”

  “I told him it was a bad idea. But I didn’t say no, precisely.”

  “You know we can’t take on anyone else,” Emma said. “He’ll slow us down.”

  “I know, I know,” said Millard. “But he’s disappearing very rapidly, and he’s frightened. Soon he’ll be entirely invisible, and he’s afraid he’ll fall behind their group one day and the Gypsies won’t notice and he’ll be lost forever in the woods among the wolves and spiders.”

  Emma groaned and rolled over to face Millard. He wasn’t going to let us sleep until this was decided. “I know he’ll be disappointed,” she said. “But it’s really impossible. I’m sorry, Mill.”

  “Fair enough,” Millard said heavily. “I’ll give him the news.”

  He rose and slipped away.

  Emma sighed, and for a while she tossed and turned, restless.

  “You did the right thing,” I whispered. “It isn’t easy being the one everybody looks to.”

  She said nothing, but snuggled into the hollow of my chest. Gradually we drifted off, the whispers of breeze-blown branches and the breathing of horses gentling us to sleep.

  * * *

  It was a night of thin sleep and bad dreams, spent much as I’d spent the previous day: being chased by packs of nightmare dogs. By morning I was worn out. My limbs felt heavy as wood, my head cottony. I might’ve felt better if I hadn’t slept at all.

  Bekhir woke us at dawn. “Rise and shine, syndrigasti!” he shouted, tossing out hunks of brick-hard bread. “There’ll be time for sleeping when you’re dead!”

  Enoch knocked his bread against a rock and it clacked like wood. “We’ll be dead soon enough, with breakfast like this!”

  Bekhir roughed Enoch’s hair, grinning. “Ahh, come on. Where’s your peculiar spirit this morning?”

  “In the wash,” said Enoch, covering his head with the sleeping roll.

  Bekhir gave us ten minutes to prepare for the ride to town. He was making good on his promise and would have us there before the morning’s first train. I got up, stumbled to a bucket of water, splashed some on my face, brushed my teeth with my finger. Oh, how I missed my toothbrush. How I longed for my minty floss, my ocean-breeze-scented deodorant stick. What I wouldn’t have given, just then, to find a Smart Aid store.

  My kingdom for a pack of fresh underwear!

  As I raked bits of hay from my hair with my fingers and bit into a loaf of inedible bread, the Gypsies and their children watched us with mournful faces. It was as if they knew, somehow, that the previous night’s fun had been a last hurrah, and now we were being led off to the gallows. I tried to cheer one of them up. “It’s okay,” I said to a towheaded little boy who seemed on the verge of tears. “We’re going to be fine.”

  He looked at me as if I were a talking ghost, his eyes wide and uncertain.

  Eight horses were rounded up, and eight Gypsy riders—one for each of us. Horses would get us to town much faster than a caravan of wagons could. They were also terrifying to me.

  I’d never ridden a horse. I was probably the only marginally rich kid in Am
erica who hadn’t. It wasn’t because I didn’t think horses were beautiful, majestic creatures, the pinnacle of animal creation, etc., etc.—it’s just that I didn’t believe any animal had the slightest interest in being mounted or ridden by a human being. Besides, horses were very large, with rippling muscles and big, grinding teeth, and they looked at me as if they knew I was afraid and were hoping for an opportunity to kick my head in. Not to mention the lack of a seatbelt on a horse—no secondary restraint systems of any kind—and yet horses could go nearly as fast as cars but were much bouncier. So the whole endeavor just seemed inadvisable.

  I said none of this, of course. I shut up and set my jaw and hoped I’d live at least long enough to die in a more interesting way than by falling off a horse.

  From the first giddyap! we were at full gallop. I abandoned my dignity right away and bear-hugged the Gypsy man on the saddle in front of me who held the reins—so quickly that I didn’t have a chance to wave goodbye to the Gypsies who had gathered to see us off. Which was just as well: goodbyes had never been my strong suit anyway, and lately my life had felt like an unbroken series of them. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.

  We rode. My thighs went numb from squeezing the horse. Bekhir led the pack, his peculiar boy riding with him in the saddle. The boy rode with his back straight and arms at his sides, confident and unafraid, such a contrast from last night. He was in his element here, among the Gypsies. He didn’t need us. These were his people.

  Eventually we slowed to a trot and I found the courage to un-bury my face from the rider’s jacket and take in the changing landscape. The forest had flattened into fields. We were descending into a valley, in the middle of which was a town that, from here, looked no bigger than a postage stamp, overwhelmed by green on all sides. Tracing toward it from the north was a long ellipsis of puffy white dots: the smoky breath of a train.