by Ransom Riggs
Emma, Enoch, Bronwyn, and Addison went out. Perplexus cleared his throat irritably, reminding me he was in the room. “Mi scusi, Signora Peregrine, we haven’t finished—”
“I believe we have, Mr. Anomalous,” Miss Peregrine said in a pleasant but clipped tone, which coming from her was practically a shove out the door. He turned red and left muttering curses in Italian.
Miss Peregrine saw Noor rake rain-plastered hair from her neck and asked us if we wanted to change.
“That’s kind of you,” Noor replied, “but if we don’t tell you what happened soon I think I’m going to have a nervous breakdown.”
Miss Peregrine’s mouth tightened into a thin line. “Then by all means,” she said, “let’s begin.”
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
In lieu of fresh clothes we were given blankets to wrap ourselves in, and the ymbrynes-in-training returned with tea and snacks that were laid out on a table but went untouched; we had no appetite. And then we were finally alone with the two ymbrynes, perched on a small sofa between Miss Avocet in her ornately carved wheelchair and Miss Peregrine, who stood beside us, apparently too anxious to sit.
“Tell us everything,” she said. “I think we know much of it, but tell it anyway, and leave nothing out.”
So we began our awful story. I told them how we’d decided that if Noor was going to stay with us permanently she should have more of her own personal things, and so we’d gone to her foster parents’ apartment in Brooklyn via the New York loop.
“Without telling a single soul where you were going,” Miss Avocet said, her long fingernails drumming the arms of her wheelchair.
It seemed indefensible now, but I tried to explain anyway. Things had calmed down in the Acre, I said. The dark clouds of danger that had hung over our heads the past few weeks had seemed to clear. Our friends had been coming and going, using the Panloopticon with some freedom, and Noor and I felt we’d earned enough leeway to do the same.
“We really thought it was safe,” Noor added, sounding genuinely apologetic. “We thought we’d be back before anyone noticed.”
I told them about the postcard we’d found in a stack of mail at her foster parents’ place. That it seemed to have been written by V and invited Noor to come visit her. The address was a place that was only a few hours away by car. “We were already out of the Acre when we found it,” I added, feeling like a kid trying to wheedle his way out of being grounded. “And rather than coming all the way back—”
“It was something we wanted to do ourselves,” Noor cut in.
“We don’t need your justifications,” Miss Avocet said. “You’re not on trial here.” And then she muttered, “Yet.”
I wasn’t sorry, in retrospect, that we’d done it alone. I tried to imagine Noor leading not just me but several of our friends through the Waynoka loop and its dual tornados. The odds of everyone surviving were slim at best. And even if a number of us had managed to reach V, would it really have changed anything? Murnau would still have taken us by surprise, and in that hostage situation, with his gun trained on V, would it really have mattered how many of us had been there?
Maybe, maybe not.
Noor took over the telling. She described driving into Waynoka, and the strange feeling of déjà vu that had come over her. She described the storage facility, and the odd man we met among the cages who was toiling in pain. As we described him I saw Miss Peregrine and her mentor exchange a knowing look. Noor described the tornado-plagued loop. The song she remembered from childhood, taught to her by V, which had seen us through the loop’s trials, one near-death experience after another, until we reached V’s little cottage.
Here Noor stopped, her face tightening, and she fell silent. She could not continue, so I did.
“V wasn’t expecting us,” I said.
“It wasn’t she who sent that postcard, was it?” Miss Avocet asked.
I shook my head slowly. “She was angry when she saw us,” I said. “Terrified, too.”
“‘What the hell are you doing here?’” Noor said quietly. “That’s what she said when she saw us.” Her lip quivered. “What she said to me.” She nodded at me to keep going.
“She took us into her house,” I said, “which was practically an arsenal, and started locking it down like she was expecting an attack. And before she could finish, one came.”
“Murnau,” muttered Miss Peregrine.
“He was the man we’d helped in the storage warehouse,” I said. “He’d disguised himself.” I paused. Shifted uncomfortably. “The last ingredient on Bentham’s list wasn’t the heart of the mother of birds. He was never after either of you. It was the heart of the—”
“Mother of storms,” Miss Avocet said. “Francesca noticed Bentham’s intentional mistranslation last night. I suppose he hoped it would throw Caul’s people off the trail.”
I shook my head. “It didn’t.”
“Murnau killed her,” said Miss Peregrine. She didn’t need to ask; she could read it on our faces.
Noor’s chin dipped to her breastbone. She took a shuddering breath, and when she began to steady, I continued.
“He shot her. Then he shot the two of us with some kind of sleep dart. And when we woke up . . .”
I stopped. Couldn’t make myself say it in front of Noor. Even speaking the words aloud seemed a kind of violence. Miss Peregrine sat beside Noor on the sofa and put a hand on her back.
“He took her heart,” Miss Avocet said, staring at her liver-spotted hands, now balled to fists in her lap.
“Yes,” I whispered.
I told them how Murnau took the heart and his leather bag of unholy trophies and ran straight into a tornado that was raging across the road. How he’d been swept up, and how shortly thereafter the face of Caul had appeared in the wind and among the whipping branches of an uprooted tree, and how his voice had boomed my name in the form of a thunderclap.
Miss Peregrine straightened. “Horace dreamed it,” she said. “That very image: Caul’s face in the whirlwind. He dreamed it two nights ago.”
My throat tightened. “Just as it was happening,” I said. Not a prophetic dream, more of a channeling. A supernatural livestream. I looked at my ymbryne. “Then you already knew.”
She shook her head. “We feared the worst. But we didn’t know—until just this moment—that Caul had truly been resurrected.”
“May the elders help us,” Miss Avocet said.
Noor’s head sank.
“We did know something was terribly wrong,” Miss Peregrine said. “There have been . . . disturbances.”
I nodded. “Emma said it’s been raining . . . bones?”
“Bones, blood, ash. There was a squall of larynxes very early this morning.”
“Perversions in the fabric of the loop,” said Miss Avocet. “They can mean a loop is breaking down, beginning to fail in telltale ways.”
“We thought it might be a result of the temporal experiments Perplexus has been conducting recently,” Miss Peregrine said, and flashed a guilty look at the elder ymbryne. “I believe I owe him an apology.”
“I have wondered,” Miss Avocet said, “whether these phenomena could be the result of a hostile force attempting to sabotage our loop from outside.”
Noor’s head rose. “Like a hacker messing with the code.”
The ymbrynes looked at her blankly.
“The elders called these irregularities desolations,” said Miss Avocet. “Such phenomena often heralded a loop’s demise.”
“I’m so sorry,” Noor said miserably. “I’m so, so sorry.”
“Oh, nonsense,” Miss Peregrine said. “Why?”
“This is my fault. I led Murnau to V. It’s my fault she’s dead. My fault Caul’s back.”
“Well, if it’s your fault, it’s just as much his for helping you,” said M
iss Avocet, poking a finger at me, and Noor’s mouth fell open in surprise. “And Fiona’s for allowing herself to be captured so they could slice out her tongue,” she went on. “And those deadrisers who sat on their backsides while the wights turned their precious graveyard inside out looking for the alphaskull. And mine and Francesca’s, come to think of it, for not catching Bentham’s sneaky mistranslation of storms earlier, which would have tipped you off the moment you realized V’s loop was infested with tornadoes.”
“All right?” Miss Peregrine said to Noor. “Enough of this my fault business. That is self-pitying piffle, and helpful to no one.”
“All right,” Noor said, forced by their good-natured bullying to agree. But I knew the question of blame was more complicated for her than they’d made it out to be.
“But has Caul attacked anyone?” I said, the question I’d been dying to ask finally bursting out. “Has he shown himself?”
“Not yet,” said Miss Avocet. “Not that we know of.”
“But he will,” I said.
“Oh yes. Most certainly he will.” Miss Peregrine rose from the sofa and crossed to the window. She studied the view briefly, then turned to face us. “But if I know my brother, this attack will come in a way we’re not expecting, at a time we’re not expecting. He won’t rush. He’s careful, methodical—like all wights.”
“Just a moment,” said Miss Avocet, sitting as erect as the parenthetical curvature of her back would allow. “How did the two of you escape the loop before it collapsed? You haven’t told that part of the story yet.”
“I think it had something to do with this,” Noor said, and she dug V’s strange stopwatch out of her pocket.
Miss Avocet’s rheumy eyes flashed with interest. “May I examine that?”
Noor passed it to her. The old ymbryne fished up a monocle that hung from a thin chain around her neck and held it close to the watch. After a moment she exclaimed, “Why, this is a temporal expulsatator!” She flipped the watch over in her hand. “I was told this never made it to production. Too unpredictable. It had a tendency to turn the user gut-side-out.”
“I think V kept it just for emergencies,” I said, trying not to picture the oozing mess we might’ve become had the thing malfunctioned. “We found it in V’s hand after we woke up on my grandfather’s porch.”
“In Florida?” Miss Peregrine’s gaze had wandered out the window again, but now it snapped back to me. “Yes, that makes sense. Abe trained her, after all. And they worked together for some years . . .”
“She was an ymbryne,” I said. “V made that loop herself. Did you know?”
Miss Peregrine frowned at Miss Avocet. “I did not.”
“I knew,” Miss Avocet said, answering Miss Peregrine’s unasked question. “Abe introduced me to Velya when she was just a teenager. He asked me to train her in secret. As a favor to Abe, I agreed.”
“You might’ve told me, Esmerelda,” Miss Peregrine said, sounding more hurt than angry.
“My apologies. But it would not have helped the children’s search. Only made it seem impossible, and discouraged them.”
“Because how do you find a loop that’s never been mapped?” I said.
Miss Avocet nodded. “When I heard Velya was hiding in America, I did wonder if she’d made her own loop, so that she could hide without having to entrust her whereabouts to another person. But I never suspected she would create such a dangerous one, intentionally, as a means of defense. It’s brilliant, really.”
“Quite,” Miss Peregrine agreed. “But what a lonely life that must have been.”
“I’d like to bury her,” Noor said quietly.
“We had to leave her behind,” I explained. “Her body’s in my grandfather’s bunker.”
“We don’t bury ymbrynes, at least not in the usual way you’re accustomed to,” Miss Avocet said. “But she deserves a funeral at the minimum.” She looked away and muttered what sounded like a prayer in Old Peculiar, her downturned mouth and pinched brow transforming her face into a topography of creases.
“We’ll send a team to retrieve her body,” Miss Peregrine said.
“I’d like to go,” Noor said.
“Me too,” I said. “There’s a hollowgast lurking around. A pretty injured one, but still.”
“Out of the question,” Miss Avocet said flatly.
“A hollowgast?” Miss Peregrine stiffened. “You mean you were attacked?”
“There was a wight patrolling my grandfather’s yard,” I said. “The hollow was off in the woods. It seemed like they were waiting for something, but I don’t think it was us. The wight was pretty surprised when we showed up.”
“He was even more surprised when I stabbed him in the neck,” said Noor.
Miss Peregrine looked frustrated. “Sometimes it seems as if my brother’s forces are inexhaustible. I truly thought we’d killed or captured most of them.”
“Most, but not all, it would appear,” said Miss Avocet. “We’ve kept a careful count of the hollowgast over the years. I think the one you encountered today really must have been the last of them. Now please, children, finish your narrative.”
I told the rest quickly: our escape into Abe’s bunker. His teleprinter-activated home defense system, a detail that impressed the ymbrynes but made me think, yet again, about the sacrifice my grandfather had made for me the night he died, by leading that hollow into the woods and fighting him there with just a letter opener, rather than sheltering in his bunker. I told them about our mad dash across Englewood in my grandfather’s unwieldy car, in a hurricane, with an injured and furious hollow chasing us.
Having recounted it all, I could hardly believe we were here, safe, breathing the same air as our friends. I thought we’d lost our lives, this world, everything.
“So?” I said. “What now?”
Miss Peregrine’s face darkened. “Now we try to prepare for what’s coming. Something we don’t yet know the shape or size of.”
“War,” said Miss Avocet. “I wish I could say it was none of your concern. That this is the province of ymbrynes and the senior-most among us, the battle-hardened, the veterans. The grown.” She turned her body toward us. “But it is not. It concerns you intimately. Especially you, Miss Pradesh.”
Noor met her gaze unflinchingly. “I’ll do anything that’s needed. I’m not afraid.”
Miss Avocet reached out and patted her hand. “That’s good. Though a modicum of fear wouldn’t hurt, either. It’s the absolutely unafraid who tend to die first, and we need you, dear. We need you badly.” She picked up a cane that was leaning against her chair and rapped the brass tip on the ground twice. The door flew open and her two ymbrynes-in-training came inside. “Call an emergency meeting of the Ymbryne Council. And when that’s done, escort me to the council chamber.”
“Yes, madam,” they said in unison, then quickly went out again, petticoats shushing.
“I’ll escort Jacob and Noor back to the house and meet you in the council chamber shortly,” Miss Peregrine said. “Their friends are all waiting, and they’re about to receive some very alarming news. I’d like to help break it.”
Miss Avocet looked pained. “Do they have to be told right now? I’d rather inform all our citizenry at once, after the Council has had a chance to talk things over.”
“I can’t ask Jacob and Noor to lie to their friends, and I haven’t the heart to keep them in suspense any longer.”
Miss Avocet nodded. “I suppose they deserve to know first, anyway, after all they’ve done. But they mustn’t spread word around about . . . him.”
“Understood,” said Miss Peregrine, and conducted Noor and me out into the hall, where Enoch had been shamelessly eavesdropping.
“Him who?” he said, trailing after us. “Who’s Him?”
“I thought I asked you to return to the house, Mr. O’Connor,” Miss Pe
regrine said through her teeth. “And you’ll find out soon enough.”
“I don’t like the sound of that at all,” said Enoch. “By the way, you two should really wash up. You’re a mess, and frankly, you smell. Coming from me, that should tell you something.”
Noor looked down at her shirt, partially dried and gone stiff with mud and blood, and grimaced. There were a pair of washrooms opposite Bentham’s office, and Francesca had left a pile of towels and fresh clothes for us beside them.
“Change, by all means, but be quick about it,” Miss Peregrine said. “I’ve got a meeting to attend.”
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
I felt a bit guilty, taking an extra thirty seconds to soak my hands in hot water, to clean caked mud from my face and inside my ears, but I needed it badly—a few seconds alone, a moment to breathe. I stripped off my torn shirt and wet jeans and changed into the clothes Francesca and Sigrid had given me. I would’ve donned a pink bunny suit rather than spend another minute in a shirt stained with V’s blood, but happily I didn’t have to stoop to that. They’d given me an old suit to wear: a white collarless button-down shirt, black pants, black jacket, black boots. My shaky hands kept fumbling with the buttons, and I had to force myself to slow down, to breathe, to concentrate on the tiny careful motions required of my fingers. After a few tries, my breathing evened out. It all fit, even the shoes. A vest and tie were part of the outfit, too, but I didn’t feel the need to compete with Horace for best dressed, so I left those folded on the wooden vanity, and my ruined clothes piled in the corner.
Time to go, I told myself, but my feet wouldn’t turn toward the door. I ran a hand through my hair and looked at myself in the gold-trimmed mirror. I felt as creaky and tired as an old man, but I looked okay, I thought.
The pictures covering the vestibule outside continued throughout the bathroom, and I noticed a framed photo of Bentham above the vanity. Strange, I thought. In the photo, he was wearing the very suit I had just put on—plus a top hat, tie, and watch chain—and he sat between two presumably peculiar animals, a baby goat and a small dog. And he was, arrestingly, staring right into the lens, his expression humorless and severe, as usual.
