by Ransom Riggs
“Then why haven’t I ever heard about this?” said Enoch.
“Because it was extremely controversial and the results were immediately covered up, so no one would attempt to replicate them. In any event, it turns out that you can bring a normal into a loop, but they have to be forced through, and only someone with an ymbryne’s power can do it. But because normals do not have a second soul, they cannot handle a time loop’s inherent paradoxes, and their brains turn to mush. They become drooling, catatonic vegetables from the moment they enter. Not unlike these poor people before us.”
There was a moment of quiet while Millard’s words registered. Then Emma’s hands went to her mouth and she said quietly, “Oh, hell. He’s right.”
“Well, then,” said the clown. “In that case, things are even worse than we thought.”
I felt the air go out of the room.
“I’m not sure I follow,” said Horace.
“He said the monsters stole their souls!” Olive shouted, and then she ran crying to Bronwyn and buried her face in her coat.
“These peculiars didn’t lose their abilities,” said Millard. “They were stolen from them—extracted, along with their souls, which were then fed to hollowgast. This allowed the hollows to evolve sufficiently to enter loops, a development which enabled their recent assault on peculiardom—and netted the wights even more kidnapped peculiars whose souls they could extract, with which they evolved still more hollows, and so on, in a vicious cycle.”
“Then it isn’t just the ymbrynes they want,” said Emma. “It’s us, too—and our souls.”
Hugh stood at the foot of the whispering man’s bed, his last bee buzzing angrily around him. “All the peculiar children they kidnapped over the years … this is what they were doing to them? I figured they just became hollowgast food. But this … this is leagues more evil.”
“Who’s to say they don’t mean to extract the ymbrynes’ souls, too?” said Enoch.
That sent a special chill through us. The clown turned to Horace and said, “How’s your best-case scenario looking now, fella?”
“Don’t tease me,” Horace replied. “I bite.”
“Everyone out!” ordered the nurse. “Souls or no souls, these people are ill. This is no place to bicker.”
We filed sullenly into the hall.
“All right, you’ve given us the horror show,” Emma said to the clown and the folding man, “and we are duly horrified. Now tell us what you want.”
“Simple,” said the folding man. “We want you to stay and fight with us.”
“We just figured we’d show you how much it’s in your own best interest to do so,” said the clown. He clapped Millard on the back. “But your friend here did a better job of that than we ever could’ve.”
“Stay here and fight for what?” Enoch said. “The ymbrynes aren’t even in London—Miss Wren said as much.”
“Forget London! London’s finished!” the clown said. “The battle’s over here. We lost. As soon as Wren has saved every last peculiar she can from these ruined loops, we’ll posse up and travel—to other lands, other loops. There must be more survivors out there, peculiars like us, with the fight still burning in them.”
“We will build army,” said the folding man. “Real one.”
“As for finding out where the ymbrynes are,” said the clown, “no problem. We’ll catch a wight and torture it out of him. Make him show us on the Map of Days.”
“You have a Map of Days?” said Millard.
“We have two. The peculiar archives is downstairs, you know.”
“That is good news indeed,” Millard said, his voice charged with excitement.
“Catching a wight is easier said than done,” said Emma. “And they lie, of course. Lying is what they do best.”
“Then we’ll catch two and compare their lies,” the clown said.
“They come sniffing around here pretty often, so next time we see one—bam! We’ll grab him.”
“There’s no need to wait,” said Enoch. “Didn’t Miss Wren say there are wights in this very building?”
“Sure,” said the clown, “but they’re frozen. Dead as doornails.”
“That doesn’t mean they can’t be interrogated,” Enoch said, a grin spreading across his face.
The clown turned to the folding man. “I’m really starting to like these weirdos.”
“Then you are with us?” said the folding man. “You stay and fight?”
“I didn’t say that,” said Emma. “Give us a minute to talk this over.”
“What is there to talk over?” said the clown.
“Of course, take all time you need,” said the folding man, and he pulled the clown down the hall with him. “Come, I will make coffee.”
“All right,” the clown said reluctantly.
We formed a huddle, just as we had so many times since our troubles began, only this time rather than shouting over one another, we spoke in orderly turns. The gravity of all this had put us in a solemn state of mind.
“I think we should fight,” said Hugh. “Now that we know what the wights are doing to us, I couldn’t live with myself if we just went back to the way things were, and tried to pretend none of this was happening. To fight is the only honorable thing.”
“There’s honor in survival, too,” said Millard. “Our kind survived the twentieth century by hiding, not fighting—so perhaps all we need is a better way to hide.”
Then Bronwyn turned to Emma and said, “I want to know what you think.”
“Yeah, I want to know what Emma thinks,” said Olive.
“Me too,” said Enoch, which took me by surprise.
Emma drew a long breath, then said, “I feel terrible for the other ymbrynes. It’s a crime what’s happened to them, and the future of our kind may depend on their rescue. But when all is said and done, my allegiance doesn’t belong to those other ymbrynes, or to other peculiar children. It belongs to the woman to whom I owe my life—Miss Peregrine, and Miss Peregrine alone.” She paused and nodded—as if testing and confirming the soundness of her own words—then continued. “And when, bird willing, she becomes herself again, I’ll do whatever she needs me to do. If she says fight, I’ll fight. If she wants to hide us away in a loop somewhere, I’ll go along with that, too. Either way, my creed has never changed: Miss Peregrine knows best.”
The others considered this. Finally Millard said, “Very wisely put, Miss Bloom.”
“Miss Peregrine knows best!” cheered Olive.
“Miss Peregrine knows best!” echoed Hugh.
“I don’t care what Miss Peregrine says,” said Horace. “I’ll fight.”
Enoch choked back a laugh. “You?”
“Everyone thinks I’m a coward. This is my chance to prove them wrong.”
“Don’t throw your life away because of a few jokes made at your expense,” said Hugh. “Who gives a whit what anyone else thinks?”
“It isn’t just that,” said Horace. “Remember the vision I had back on Cairnholm? I caught a glimpse of where the ymbrynes are being kept. I couldn’t show you on a map, but I’m sure of this—I’ll know it when I see it.” He tapped his forehead with his index finger.
“What I’ve got up here might just save those chaps a heap of trouble. And save those other ymbrynes, too.”
“If some fight and some stay behind,” said Bronwyn, “I’ll protect whoever stays. Protecting’s always been my vocation.”
And then Hugh turned to me and said, “What about you, Jacob?” and my mouth went instantly dry.
“Yeah,” said Enoch. “What about you?”
“Well,” I said, “I …”
“Let’s take a walk,” Emma said, hooking her arm around mine. “You and I need to have a chat.”
* * *
We walked slowly down the stairs, saying nothing to each other until we’d reached the bottom and the curved wall of ice where Althea had frozen shut the exit tunnel. We sat together and looked into the ice for a long w
hile, at the forms trapped there, blurred and distorted in the darkening light, suspended like ancient eggs in blue amber. We sat, and I could tell from the silence collecting between us that this was going to be a hard conversation—one neither of us wanted to start.
Finally Emma said, “Well?”
I said, “I’m like the others—I want to know what you think.”
She laughed in the way people do when something’s not funny but awkward, and said, “I’m not entirely sure you do.”
She was right, but I prodded her to speak anyway. “Come on.”
Emma laid a hand on my knee, then retracted it. She fidgeted. My chest tightened.
“I think it’s time you went home,” she said finally.
I blinked. It took a moment to convince myself she’d really said it. “I don’t understand,” I mumbled.
“You said yourself you were sent here for a reason,” she said quickly, staring into her lap, “and that was to help Miss Peregrine. Now it seems she may be saved. If you owed her any debts, they’re paid. You helped us more than you’ll ever realize. And now it’s time for you to go home.” Her words came all in a rush, like they were a painful thing she’d been carrying a long time, and it was a relief to finally be rid of them.
“This is my home,” I said.
“No, it isn’t,” she insisted, looking at me now. “Peculiardom is dying, Jacob. It’s a lost dream. And even if somehow, by some miracle, we were to take up arms against the corrupted and prevail, we’d be left with a shadow of what we once had; a shattered mess. You have a home—one that isn’t ruined—and parents who are alive, and who love you, in some measure.”
“I told you. I don’t want those things. I chose this.”
“You made a promise, and you’ve kept it. And now that’s over, and it’s time for you to go home.”
“Quit saying that!” I shouted. “Why are you pushing me away?”
“Because you have a real home and a real family, and if you think any of us would’ve chosen this world over those things—wouldn’t have given up our loops and longevity and peculiar powers long ago for even a taste of what you have—then you really are living in a fantasy world. It makes me absolutely ill to think you might throw that all away—and for what?”
“For you, you idiot! I love you!”
I couldn’t believe I’d said it. Neither could Emma—her mouth had fallen open. “No,” she said, shaking her head like she could erase my words. “No, that’s not going to help anything.”
“But it’s true!” I said. “Why do you think I stayed instead of going home? It wasn’t because of my grandfather or some stupid sense of duty—not really—or because I hated my parents or didn’t appreciate my home and all the nice things we had. I stayed because of you!”
She didn’t say anything for a moment, just nodded and then looked away and ran her hands through her hair, revealing a streak of white concrete dust I hadn’t noticed before, which made her look suddenly older. “It’s my own fault,” she said finally. “I should never have kissed you. Perhaps I made you believe something that wasn’t true.”
That stung me, and I recoiled instinctively, as if to protect myself. “Don’t say that to me if you don’t mean it,” I said. “I may not have a lot of dating experience, but don’t treat me like some pathetic loser who’s powerless in the face of a pretty girl. You didn’t make me stay. I stayed because I wanted to—and because what I feel for you is as real as anything I’ve ever felt.” I let that hang in the air between us for a moment, feeling the truth of it. “You feel it too,” I said. “I know you do.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry, that was cruel, and I shouldn’t have said it.” Her eyes watered a little and she wiped at them with her hand. She had tried to make herself like stone, but now the facade was falling away. “You’re right,” she said. “I care about you very much. That’s why I can’t watch you throw your life away for nothing.”
“I wouldn’t be!”
“Dammit, Jacob, yes you would!” She was so incensed that she inadvertently lit a fire in her hand—which, luckily, she’d since removed from my knee. She clapped her hands together, snuffed the flame, and then stood up. Pointing into the ice, she said, “See that potted plant on the desk in there?”
I saw. Nodded.
“It’s green now, preserved by the ice. But inside it’s dead. And the moment that ice melts, it’ll turn brown and wither into mush.” She locked eyes with me. “I’m like that plant.”
“You aren’t,” I said. “You’re … perfect.”
Her face tightened into a expression of forced patience, as if she were explaining something to a thick-headed child. She sat down again, took my hand, and raised it to her smooth cheek. “This?” she said. “Is a lie. It’s not really me. If you could see me for what I really am, you wouldn’t want me anymore.”
“I don’t care about that stuff—”
“I’m an old woman!” she said. “You think we’re alike, but we aren’t. This person you say you love? She’s really a hag, an old crone hiding in a body of a girl. You’re a young man—a boy—a baby compared to me. You could never understand what it’s like, being this close to death all the time. And you shouldn’t. I never want you to. You’ve still got your whole life to look forward to, Jacob. I’ve already spent mine. And one day—soon, perhaps—I will die and return to dust.”
She said it with such cold finality that I knew she believed it. It hurt her to say these things, just as it hurt me to hear them, but I understood why she was doing it. She was, in her way, trying to save me.
It stung anyway—partly because I knew she was right. If Miss Peregrine recovered, then I would have done what I’d set out to do: solved the mystery of my grandfather; settled my family’s debts to Miss Peregrine; lived the extraordinary life I’d always dreamed of—or part of one, anyway. At which point my only remaining obligation was to my parents. As for Emma, I didn’t care at all that she was older than me, or different from me, but she’d made up her mind that I should and it seemed there was no convincing her otherwise.
“Maybe when this is all over,” she said, “I’ll send you a letter, and you’ll send one back. And maybe one day you can come see me again.”
A letter. I thought of the dusty box of them I’d found in her room, written by my grandfather. Was that all I’d be to her? An old man across the ocean? A memory? And I realized that I was about to follow in my grandfather’s footsteps in a way I’d never thought possible. In so many ways, I was living his life. And probably, one day, my guard would relax too much, I’d get old and slow and distracted, and I would die his death. And Emma would continue on without me, without either of us, and one day maybe someone would find my letters in her closet, in a box beside my grandfather’s, and wonder who we were to her.
“What if you need me?” I said. “What if the hollows come back?”
Tears shimmered in her eyes. “We’ll manage somehow,” she said. “Look, I can’t talk about this anymore. I honestly don’t think my heart can take it. Shall we go upstairs and tell the others your decision?”
I clenched my jaw, suddenly irritated by how hard she was pushing me. “I haven’t decided anything,” I said. “You have.”
“Jacob, I just told you—”
“Right, you told me. But I haven’t made up my mind yet.”
She crossed her arms. “Then I can wait.”
“No,” I said, and stood up. “I need to be by myself for a while.”
And I went up the stairs without her.
I moved quietly through the halls. I stood outside the ymbryne meeting room for a while, listening to muffled voices through the door, but I didn’t go in. I peeked into the nurse’s room and saw her dozing on a stool between the single-souled peculiars. I cracked the door to Miss Wren’s room and saw her rocking Miss Peregrine in her lap, gently kneading her fingers into the bird’s feathers. I said nothing to anyone.
Wandering through empty halls and ransacke
d offices, I tried to imagine what home would feel like, if after all this I chose to go back. What I would tell my parents. I’d tell them nothing, most likely. They’d never believe me, anyway. I would say I’d gotten mad, written a letter to my father filled with crazy stories, then caught a boat to the mainland and run away. They’d call it a stress reaction. Chalk it up to some invented disorder and adjust my meds accordingly. Blame Dr. Golan for suggesting I go to Wales. Dr. Golan, whom of course they’d never hear from again. He’d skipped town, they’d say, because he was a fraud, a quack whom we never should’ve trusted. And I’d go back to being Jacob the poor, traumatized, mentally disturbed rich kid.
It sounded like a prison sentence. And yet, if my best reason for staying in peculiardom didn’t want me anymore, I wouldn’t debase myself by clinging to her. I had my pride.
How long could I stand Florida, now that I’d had a taste of this peculiar life? I was not nearly as ordinary as I used to be—or if it was true that I’d never been ordinary, now I knew it. I had changed. And that, at least, gave me some hope: that even under ordinary circumstances, I still might find a way to live an extraordinary life.
Yes, it was best to go. It really was best. If this world was dying and there was nothing to be done for it, then what was left for me here? To run and hide until there was no safe place left to go, no loop to sustain my friends’ artificial youth. To watch them die. To hold Emma as she crumbled and broke apart in my arms.
That would kill me faster than any hollow could.
So yes, I would go. Salvage what was left of my old life. Goodbye, peculiars. Goodbye, peculiardom.
It was for the best.
I wandered until I came to a place where the rooms were only half frozen, and the ice had risen halfway to the ceiling like water in a sinking ship and then stopped, leaving the tops of desks and the heads of lamps sticking out like faltering swimmers. Beyond the iced windows the sun was sinking. Shadows bloomed across the walls and multiplied in the stairwells, and as the light died it got bluer, painting everything around me a deep-sea cobalt.
