Hollow City

Page 12

Emma looked at me. “What do you think, should we hitch a ride?”
I looked at the wagons. Looked back at Emma. Thought about how my feet would feel after a six-hour walk in still-wet shoes. “Absolutely,” I said.
Signaling to the others, Emma pointed at the last wagon and mimed running after it. It was shaped like a miniature house, with a little window on each side and a platform that jutted from the back like a porch, probably just wide and deep enough to hold all of us if we squeezed tight together. The wagon was moving fast but not faster than we could sprint, so when it had passed us and we were out of the last driver’s sight, we leapt out of the brush and scurried after it. Emma climbed on first, then held out a hand for the next person. One by one we pulled ourselves up and settled into cramped positions along the wagon’s rear porch, careful to do so quietly lest the driver hear us.
We rode like that for a long time, until our ears rang with the clatter of wagon wheels and our clothes were caked with dust, until the midday sun had wheeled across the sky and dipped behind the trees, which rose up like the walls of a great green canyon on either side of us. I scanned the forest constantly, afraid that at any moment the wights and their dogs would burst out and attack us. But for hours we didn’t see anyone—not a wight, not even another traveler. It was as if we’d arrived in an abandoned country.
Now and then the caravan would stop and we’d all hold our breath, ready to flee or fight, sure we were about to be discovered. We’d send Millard out to investigate, and he would creep down from the wagon only to find that the Gypsies were just stretching their legs or reshoeing a horse, and then we’d start moving again. Eventually I stopped worrying about what would happen if we were discovered. The Gypsies seemed road-weary and harmless. We’d pass as normal and appeal to their pity. We’re just orphans with no home, we’d say. Please, could you spare a morsel of bread? With any luck, they’d give us dinner and escort us to the train station.
It wasn’t long before my theory was put to the test. The wagons pulled abruptly off the road and shuddered to a stop in a small clearing. The dust had hardly settled when a large man came striding around back of our wagon. He wore a flat cap on his head, a caterpillar mustache below his nose, and a grim expression that pulled down the corners of his mouth.
Bronwyn hid Miss Peregrine inside her coat while Emma leapt off the wagon and did her best impression of a pathetic orphan. “Sir, we throw ourselves at your mercy! Our house was hit by a bomb, you see, and our parents are dead, and we’re terribly lost …”
“Shut your gob!” the man boomed. “Get down from there, all of you!” It was a command, not a request, emphasized by the decorative-but-deadly-looking knife balanced in his hand.
We looked at one another, unsure what to do. Should we fight him and run, and probably give away our secret in the process—or play normal for a while longer and wait to see what he does? Then dozens more of them appeared, piling out of their wagons to range around us in a wide circle, many holding knives of their own. We were surrounded, our options dramatically narrowed.
The men were grizzled and sharp-eyed, dressed in dark, heavy-knit clothes built to hide layers of road dust. The women wore bright, flowing dresses, their long hair held back by scarves. Children gathered behind and between them. I tried to square what little I knew about Gypsies with the faces before me. Were they about to massacre us—or were they just naturally grumpy?
I looked to Emma for a cue. She stood with her hands pressed to her chest, not held out like she was about to make flame. If she wasn’t going to fight them, I decided, then neither was I.
I got down from the wagon like the man had asked, hands above my head. Horace and Hugh did the same, and then the others—all but Millard, who had slipped away, unseen, presumably to lurk nearby, waiting and watching.
The man with the cap, whom I’d pegged as their leader, began to fire questions at us. “Who are you? Where do you come from? Where are your elders?”
“We come from the west,” Emma said calmly. “An island off the coast. We’re orphans, as I already explained. Our houses were smashed by bombs in an air raid, and we were forced to flee. We rowed all the way to the mainland and nearly drowned.” She attempted to manufacture some tears. “We have nothing,” she sniffled. “We’ve been lost in the woods for days with no food to eat and no clothes but the ones we have on. We saw your wagons passing but were too frightened to show ourselves. We only wanted to ride as far as the town …”
The man studied her, his frown deepening. “Why were you forced to flee your island after your house was bombed? And why did you run into the woods instead of following the coast?”
Enoch spoke up. “No choice. We were being chased.”
Emma gave him a sharp look that said: Let me do this.
“Chased by who?” asked the leader.
“Bad men,” Emma said.
“Men with guns,” added Horace. “Dressed like soldiers, although they aren’t, really.”
A woman in a bright yellow scarf stepped forward. “If soldiers are after them, they’re trouble we don’t need. Send them away, Bekhir.”
“Or tie them to trees and leave them!” said a rangy-looking man.
“No!” cried Olive. “We have to get to London before it’s too late!”
The leader cocked an eyebrow. “Too late for what?” We hadn’t aroused his pity—only his curiosity. “We’ll do nothing until we find out who you are,” he said, “and what you’re worth.”
* * *
Ten men holding long-bladed knives marched us toward a flatbed wagon with a big cage mounted on top of it. Even from a distance I could see that it was something meant for animals, twenty feet by ten, made of thick iron bars.
“You’re not going to lock us in there, are you?” Olive said.
“Just until we sort out what to do with you,” said the leader.
“No, you can’t!” cried Olive. “We have to get to London, and quick!”
“And why’s that?”
“One of us is ill,” said Emma, shooting Hugh a meaningful look. “We need to get him a doctor!”
“You don’t need to go all the way to London for no doctor,” said one of the Gypsy men. “Jebbiah’s a doctor. Ain’t you, Jebbiah?”
A man with scabrous lesions spanning his cheeks stepped forward. “Which one of ye’s ill?”
“Hugh needs a specialist,” said Emma. “He’s got a rare condition. Stinging cough.”
Hugh put a hand to his throat as if it hurt him and coughed, and a bee shot out of his mouth. Some of the Gypsies gasped, and a little girl hid her face in her mother’s skirt.
“It’s some sort of trick!” said the so-called doctor.
“Enough,” said their leader. “Get in the cage, all of you.”
They shoved us toward a ramp that led to it. We clustered together at the bottom. No one wanted to go first.
“We can’t let them do this!” whispered Hugh.
“What are you waiting for?” Enoch hissed at Emma. “Burn them!”
Emma shook her head and whispered, “There are too many.” She led the way up the ramp and into the cage. Its barred ceiling was low, its floor piled deep with rank-smelling hay. When we were all inside, the leader slammed the door and locked it behind us, slipping the key into his pocket. “No one goes near them!” he shouted to anyone within earshot. “They could be witches, or worse.”
“Yes, that’s what we are!” Enoch said through the bars. “Now let us go, or we’ll turn your children into warthogs!”
The leader laughed as he walked away down the ramp. Meanwhile, the other Gypsies retreated to a safe distance and began to set up camp, pitching tents and starting cookfires. We sank down into the hay, feeling defeated and depressed.
“Look out,” Horace warned. “There are animal droppings everywhere!”
“Oh, what does it matter, Horace?” Emma said. “No one gives a chuck if your clothes are dirty!”
“I do,” Horace replied.
Emma covered her face with her hands. I sat down next to her and tried to think of something encouraging to say, but came up blank.
Bronwyn opened her coat to give Miss Peregrine some fresh air, and Enoch knelt beside her and cocked his ear, as if listening for something. “Hear that?” he said.
“What?” Bronwyn replied.
“The sound of Miss Peregrine’s life slipping away! Emma, you should’ve burned those Gypsies’ faces off while you had the chance!”
“We were surrounded!” Emma said. “Some of us would’ve gotten hurt in a big fight. Maybe killed. I couldn’t risk that.”
“So you risked Miss Peregrine instead!” said Enoch.
“Enoch, leave her be,” said Bronwyn. “It ain’t easy, deciding for everyone. We can’t take a vote every time there’s a choice to be made.”
“Then maybe you should let me decide for everyone,” Enoch replied.
Hugh snorted. “We would’ve been killed ages ago if you were in charge.”
“Look, it doesn’t matter now,” I said. “We have to get out of this cage and make it to that town. We’re a lot closer now than if we hadn’t hitched a ride in the first place, so there’s no need to cry over milk that hasn’t even spilled yet. We just need to think of a way to escape.”
So we thought, and came up with lots of ideas, but none that seemed workable.
“Maybe Emma can burn through this floor,” Bronwyn suggested. “It’s made of wood.”
Emma swept a clear patch in the hay and knocked on the floor.
“It’s too thick,” she said miserably.
“Wyn, can you bend these bars apart?” I asked.
“Maybe,” she replied, “but not with those Gypsies so close by. They’ll see and come running with their knives again.”
“We need to sneak out, not break out,” said Emma.
Then we heard a whisper from outside the bars. “Did you forget about me?”
“Millard!” Olive exclaimed, nearly floating out of her shoes with excitement. “Where have you been?”
“Getting the lay of the land, as it were. And waiting for things to calm down.”
“Think you can steal the key for us?” said Emma, rattling the cage’s locked door. “I saw the head man put it in his pocket.”
“Prowling and purloinment are my specialty,” he assured us, and with that he slipped away.
* * *
The minutes crawled by. Then a half hour. Then an hour. Hugh paced the length of the cage, an agitated bee circling his head.
“What’s taking him so long?” he grumbled.
“If he doesn’t come back soon, I’m going to start tossing eggs,” said Enoch.
“Do that and you’ll get us all killed,” said Emma. “We’re sitting ducks in here. Once the smoke clears, they’ll flay us alive.”
So we sat and waited more, watching the Gypsies, the Gypsies watching back. Every minute that ticked by felt like another nail in Miss Peregrine’s coffin. I found myself staring at her, as if by looking closely enough I might be able to detect the changes happening to her—to see the still-human spark within her slowly winking out. But she looked the same as she always had, only calmer somehow, asleep in the hay next to Bronwyn, her small, feathered chest rising and falling softly. She seemed to have no awareness of the trouble we were in, or of the countdown that was hanging over her head. Maybe the fact that she could sleep at a time like this was evidence enough that she was changing. The old Miss Peregrine would’ve been having nervous fits.
Then my thoughts strayed to my parents, as they always did when I didn’t keep a tight rein on them. I tried to picture their faces as I’d last seen them. Bits and pieces coalesced in my mind: the thin rim of stubble my dad had developed after a few days on the island; the way my mom, without realizing it, would fiddle with her wedding ring when my dad talked too long about something that disinterested her; my dad’s darting eyes, always checking the horizon on his never-ending search for birds.
Now they’d be searching for me.
As evening settled in, the camp came alive around us. The Gypsies talked and laughed, and when a band of children with battered horns and fiddles struck up a song, they danced. Between songs one of the boys from the band snuck around back of our cage with a bottle in his hands. “It’s for the sick one,” he said, checking behind him nervously.
“Who?” I said, and then he nodded at Hugh, who wilted to the floor in spasms of coughing, right on cue.
The boy slipped the bottle through the bars. I twisted off the cap, gave it a sniff, and nearly fell over. It smelled like turpentine mixed with compost. “What is it?” I said.
“Works, that’s all I know.” He looked behind him again. “All right, I done something for you. Now you owes. So tell me—what crime did you do? You’re thieves, aincha?” Then he lowered his voice and said, “Or didja kill someone?”
“What’s he talking about?” said Bronwyn.
We didn’t kill anyone, I came close to saying, but then an image of Golan’s body tumbling through the air toward a battery of rocks flashed in my mind, and I kept quiet.
Emma said it for me instead. “We didn’t kill anyone!”
“Well, you musta done something,” the boy said. “Why else would they have a reward out for you?”