by Ransom Riggs
After a few hours, Fergus happened upon some men in the woods. It was the captain and his first mate. The captain leaned against the base of a tree, his shirt soaked with blood. He was dying.
Shaw laughed when he saw Fergus. “So they turned on you, too. I suppose that makes us brothers-in-arms.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Fergus said. “I’m not like you. You’re a monster.”
“I’m just a man,” the captain said. “It’s you they consider a monster. And what people think of you is all that really matters.”
“But all I’ve ever tried to do is help people!” said Fergus.
After he’d said it, though, he wondered if it was really true. The ungrateful crowd had been threatening him when he summoned a wave to douse the fires. Had he, in his anger, created a larger wave than was needed? Had a small, dark part of him destroyed the town on purpose?
Maybe he was a monster.
He decided the only thing to do was to seek a life of permanent solitude. Fergus left the captain to die and walked down the hills toward the town. Night was falling as he slipped through the ruined streets, and no one saw him. He looked for a boat at the docks that he might use, but they had all been unmoored and scattered out to sea by the great wave.
He jumped in the water and swam out to something that appeared in the darkness to be a large, flipped-over boat, but it turned out to be one of the town’s wooden houses, floating on its side. He crawled in through the front door, summoned a wave to right the house, and rode it out to sea, due south.
For days he pushed his houseboat farther and farther south, eating fish that flopped through the front door. After a week, he stopped seeing icebergs. After two the weather began to warm. After three weeks, the frost cleared from his windows, the seas grew calm, and a tropical breeze began to blow through the windows.
The house still had much of its furniture. During the day he sat in an easy chair and read books. When he wanted to sunbathe, he climbed out the window and lay on the roof. At night he got into bed and was lulled to sleep by the gentle rocking of the waves. He drifted for weeks, perfectly content with his new life of solitude.
Then one day he saw a ship on the horizon. He had no interest in meeting anyone new and tried to steer the house away from it, but the ship turned in his direction, sails billowing, and quickly overtook him.
It was a formidable-looking schooner with three masts, and it towered over the house. A rope ladder was tossed over the side. It seemed the ship wasn’t going to leave him alone, and Fergus decided he may as well climb aboard, tell the crew he didn’t need rescuing, and send them on their way. But when he topped the ladder and clambered onto the deck, he was surprised to find the deck empty save one person—a girl about his age. She had dark hair and brown skin, and she was giving Fergus a very hard look.
“What are you doing in a house in the middle of the ocean?” she asked him.
“Escaping from an island in the icy north,” Fergus replied.
“And how did you keep the house afloat?” she asked suspiciously. “And get all this way without a sail?”
“Just lucky, I guess,” Fergus said.
“That’s ridiculous,” said the girl. “Tell me the truth.”
“I’m sorry,” Fergus said, “but my mother told me never to talk about it.”
The girl narrowed her eyes at him, as if considering whether or not to throw him overboard.
Fergus avoided her gaze and glanced nervously over her shoulder. “Where’s the captain?” he asked.
“You’re looking at her,” the girl replied.
“Oh,” said Fergus, unable to hide his surprise. “Well, where’s your crew?”
“You’re looking at them,” she said.
Fergus could hardly believe it. “You mean to tell me you sailed this huge ship all the way from—”
“Cabo Verde,” the girl said.
“—all the way from Cabo Verde—by yourself?”
“Yes, I did,” the girl said.
“How?!”
“I’m sorry,” she said, “but my mother told me never to talk about it.” And then she turned her back on him and raised her arms, and a great wind blew up and billowed the sails.
She was smiling when she turned around again. “My name’s Cesaria,” she said, and put out her hand.
Fergus was stunned. He’d never met anyone like himself before. “N-nice to meet you,” he stuttered, and shook her hand. “I’m Fergus.”
“Hey, Fergus, your house is floating away!”
Fergus spun around to see the house drifting away from the ship. Then a rather large wave hit the house, and it tipped over and began to sink.
Fergus didn’t mind. He’d already decided he didn’t need the house anymore. In fact, it just might have been Fergus himself who made the wave that sunk the house.
“Well, I guess I’m stuck here,” he said, and shrugged.
“That’s okay with me,” Cesaria said, and grinned.
“Excellent,” Fergus said, and grinned back.
And the two peculiar children stood grinning at each other a long time, because they knew they had finally found someone to share their secrets with.
The Tale of Cuthbert
Once upon a peculiar time, in a forest deep and ancient, there roamed a great many animals. There were rabbits and deer and foxes, just as there are in every forest, but there were animals of a less common sort, too, like stilt-legged grimbears and two-headed lynxes and talking emu-raffes. These peculiar animals were a favorite target of hunters, who loved to shoot them and mount them on walls and show them off to their hunter friends, but loved even more to sell them to zookeepers, who would lock them in cages and charge money to view them. Now, you might think it would be far better to be locked in a cage than to be shot and mounted on a wall, but peculiar creatures must roam free to be happy, and after a while the spirits of caged ones wither, and they begin to envy their wall-mounted friends.
This was an age when giants still roamed the earth, as they did in the long-ago Aldinn times, though they were few in number and diminishing.25 And it just so happened that one of these giants lived near the forest, and he was very kind and spoke very softly and ate only plants. His name was Cuthbert. One day Cuthbert came into the forest to gather berries, and there saw a hunter hunting an emu-raffe. Being the kindly giant that he was, Cuthbert picked up the little ’raffe by the scruff of its long neck, and by standing up to his full height, on tiptoe, which he rarely did because it made all his old bones crackle, Cuthbert was able to reach up very high and deposit the emu-raffe on a mountaintop, well out of danger. Then, just for good measure, he squashed the hunter to jelly between his toes.
Word of Cuthbert’s kindness spread throughout the forest, and soon peculiar animals were coming to him every day, asking to be lifted up to the mountaintop and out of danger. And Cuthbert said, “I’ll protect you, little brothers and sisters. All I ask in return is that you talk to me and keep me company. There aren’t many giants left in the world, and I get lonely from time to time.”
And they said, “We will, Cuthbert, we will.”
So every day Cuthbert saved more peculiar animals from the hunters, lifting them up to the mountain by the scruffs of their necks, until there was a whole peculiar menagerie up there. And the animals were happy there because they could finally live in peace, and Cuthbert was happy, too, because if he stood on his tiptoes and rested his chin on the top of the mountain he could talk to his new friends all he liked.
Then one morning a witch came to see Cuthbert. The giant was bathing in a little lake in the shadow of the mountain when she said to him, “I’m terribly sorry, but I’ve got to turn you into stone.”
“Why would you do that?” asked the giant. “I’m very kindly. A helping sort of giant.”
And she said, “I was hired by the family of the hunter you s
quashed.”
“Ah,” he replied. “Forgot about him.”
“I’m terribly sorry,” the witch said again, and then she waved a birch branch at him and poor Cuthbert turned to stone.
All of a sudden Cuthbert became very heavy—so heavy that he began to sink into the lake. He sank and sank and didn’t stop sinking until he was covered in water all the way up to his neck. His animal friends saw what was happening, and though they felt terrible about it, they decided they could do nothing to help him.
“I know you can’t save me,” Cuthbert shouted up to his friends, “but at least come and talk to me! I’m stuck down here, and so very lonely!”
“But if we come down there the hunters will shoot us!” they called back.
Cuthbert knew they were right, but still he pleaded with them.
“Talk to me!” he cried. “Please come and talk to me!”
The animals tried singing and shouting to poor Cuthbert from the safety of their cliff-top, but they were too distant and their voices too small, so that even to Cuthbert and his giant ears they sounded quieter than the whisper of leaves in the wind.
“Talk to me!” he begged. “Come and talk to me!”
But they never did. And he was still crying when his throat turned to stone like the rest of him.
• • •
Editor’s note:
That is, historically, where the tale ends. However, it’s so terribly sad, so lacking in useful moral lessons, and so well-known for leaving listeners in tears, that it’s become a tradition among tellers to improvise new and less dire conclusions. I’ve taken the liberty of including my own here.
—MN
The animals tried singing and shouting to poor Cuthbert from the safety of their cliff-top, but they were too distant and their voices too small, so that even to Cuthbert and his giant ears they sounded quieter than the whisper of leaves in the wind.
“Talk to me!” he begged. “Come and talk to me!”
After a while the animals began to feel very bad, especially the emu-raffe.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” he said. “All he wants is some company. Is that so much to ask?”
“I daresay it is,” said the grimbear. “It’s dangerous down there—and with Cuthbert turned to stone, how will we get back up to the safety of our cliff-top?”
“There’s nothing that can be done for him,” said the two-headed lynx. “Unless you know how to reverse a witch’s curse.”
“Of course I don’t,” said the emu-raffe, “but that doesn’t matter. We’re all going to die one day, and perhaps today it’s Cuthbert’s turn. But we mustn’t let him die alone. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.”
It was more guilt than the other animals could bear, and soon they had all decided to join the emu-raffe, despite the dangers that faced them on the ground. Led by the ’raffe, they made a ladder of their bodies, linking hands to ankles, and climbed down the cliff-face to the ground. How they would ever get back to safety again was a question for another time. They ran to Cuthbert and comforted him, and the giant wept with gratitude even while he was turning to stone.
As they talked with him, his voice grew quieter and quieter, his lips and throat petrifying until they could hardly move. Finally he became so quiet and still that the animals wondered if he had died. The emu-raffe pressed his head against Cuthbert’s chest.
After a moment he said, “I can still hear his heart beating.”
The wren who could turn into a woman perched on the rim of Cuthbert’s ear and said, “Friend, can you hear us?”
And from his stony throat they heard, no louder than a puff of breeze: “Yes, friends.”
They broke into a cheer! Cuthbert was still alive inside his skin of stone—and so he remained. The witch’s curse had been strong, but not strong enough to petrify him through and through. The animals were now poor Cuthbert’s caretakers, as he had once been theirs: they kept him company, gathered food and dropped it into his open mouth, and talked to him all day long. (His responses became more and more rare, but they knew he was alive from the beating of his heart.) And though the wingless among them had no way to reach the safety of their cliff-top, Cuthbert kept them safe another way. They slept inside his mouth at night, and if ever hunters came along, they would climb down his throat and make howling noises that terrified the humans. Cuthbert became their home and their refuge, and even though he could not move a muscle, he was happy as could be.
Many years later, Cuthbert’s heart finally stopped beating. He died peacefully, surrounded by friends, a happy giant. The wren, who had grown up to become an ymbryne, decided they had become too numerous to continue living inside the stone giant, so she brought all the peculiar animals to a time loop she had made atop the cliff.26 She put the entrance to the loop inside Cuthbert. That way he would never be forgotten, and every coming or going was a chance to say hello to their old friend. And whenever she or any of the animals passed through Cuthbert, they patted him on the shoulder and said, “Hello, friend.” And if they stopped and listened carefully, and if the wind was blowing just right, it almost sounded like hello.
PHOTO BY LEAH GALLO
MILLARD NULLINGS is an accomplished philologist, a renowned scholar, and a former ward of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. While in residence there, he earned over twenty correspondence degrees, authored the world’s most comprehensive history of a single day on a small island, and helped vanquish a couple of truly nasty monsters. He is allergic to grimbear dander and almond butter. He cannot be seen with the naked eye.
PHOTO BY TAHEREH MAFI
RANSOM RIGGS is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children novels. Riggs was born on a farm in Maryland and grew up in southern Florida. He studied literature at Kenyon College and film at the University of Southern California. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, bestselling author Tahereh Mafi.
PHOTO BY JULIA DAVIDSON
ANDREW DAVIDSON graduated from the Royal College of Art with a Masters in Graphic Design. Davidson has worked as an illustrator in a number of different disciplines, but craft and design have always been the cornerstones of his work. His varied career has included wood engravings for The Iron Man by Ted Hughes, more than twelve sets of stamps for The Royal Mail, and the glass etched doors for the Centre Court at Wimbledon. He is married to his wife, Julia, and has two sons, Lewis and Hugh.
DUTTON BOOKS
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Copyright © 2016 by Ransom Riggs
Illustrations copyright © 2016 by Andrew Davidson
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Photograph of Millard Nullings: Credit: Leah Gallo. ‘MISS PEREGRINE’S HOME FOR PECULIAR CHILDREN’ © 2016 Twentieth Century Fox. All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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1. An historic zone of exile thought to lie somewhere within modern-day Cornwall.
2. There was a time—a certain long-ago halcyon era—when peculiars could live together, unlooped and in the open, without fear of persec
ution. Peculiars of the day often divided themselves into groups according to their ability, a practice now frowned upon as it encourages tribalism and inter-peculiar hostility.
3. The source of the cannibals’ wealth? The manufacture of candy and children’s toys.
4. The country names here are fictional, though in some regional versions of the tale they are substituted with real places. In one telling Frankenbourg is Spain, in another Galatia is Persia; the story, in any event, remains the same.
5. There used to be a highly acidic liquid you could buy on the peculiar black market. The bottles were wrapped in snakeskin, and the stuff inside could burn through metal. It was called Princess Spit—in honor, no doubt, of this tale. After a number of unfortunate incidents involving its misuse, peculiar authorities shut down its manufacture. These days, bottles of Princess Spit are rare collectors’ items.
6. The Council of Important Peculiars, made up entirely of men, predated the Council of Ymbrynes by a great many years. It was composed of a dozen chummy councilmen who met twice a year to write and amend the laws peculiars were supposed to follow, which mainly concerned conflict resolution (duels were permitted), the circumstances under which peculiars were allowed to use their abilities around normals (whenever it suited them), and the myriad penalties for breaking the rules (ranging from tongue-lashings to banishment).
7. While this tale doesn’t mention them, likely because they are too numerous to mention, many remarkable discoveries were made at this time regarding the behavior and function of loops. These included the concept of arrested aging, the limits of accessibility for non-peculiars, a loop’s dual exits into past and present, and perhaps even the rudiments of time-stream theory and the problems of parallel streams. All of which makes Ymeene not only Britain’s first ymbryne but a true pioneer in loopology. Neither should the contributions of her friend Englebert be overlooked: within his removable head dwelled a keen scientific mind, and if not for his detailed notes, many of Ymeene’s breakthroughs would have been lost.
