Hollow City
Page 9
“Please, Addie,” said the emu-raffe. “Not now—our guests are eating!”
“They asked, and now I’m telling them,” said Addison. “Their bread will still be here in a few minutes!”
Reluctantly, we put down our food and followed the dog. Fiona stayed behind to watch Claire, who was still sleeping, and with Grunt and the emu-raffe loping after us, we crossed the plateau to the little patch of woods that grew at the far edge. A gravel path wound through the trees, and we crunched along it toward a clearing. Just before we reached it, Addison said, “May I introduce you to the finest peculiar animals who ever lived!” and the trees parted to reveal a small graveyard filled with neat rows of white headstones.
“Oh, no,” I heard Bronwyn say.
“There are probably more peculiar animals buried here than are currently alive in all of Europe,” Addison said, moving through the graves to reach one in particular, which he leaned on with his forepaws. “This one’s name was Pompey. She was a fine dog, and could heal wounds with a few licks of her tongue. A wonder to behold! And yet this is how she was treated.” Addison clicked his tongue and Grunt scurried forward with a little book in his hands, which he thrust into mine. It was a photo album, opened to a picture of a dog that had been harnessed, like a mule or a horse, to a little wagon. “She was enslaved by carnival folk,” Addison said, “forced to pull fat, spoiled children like some common beast of burden—whipped, even, with riding crops!” His eyes burned with anger. “By the time Miss Wren rescued her, Pompey was so depressed she was nearly dead from it. She lingered on for only a few weeks after she arrived, then was interred here.”
I passed the book around. Everyone who saw the photo sighed or shook their head or muttered bitterly to themselves.
Addison crossed to another grave. “Grander still was Ca’ab Magda,” he said, “an eighteen-tusked wildebeest who roamed the loops of Outer Mongolia. She was terrifying! The ground thundered under her hooves when she ran! They say she even marched over the Alps with Hannibal’s army in 218 BC. Then, some years ago, a hunter shot her.”
Grunt showed us a picture of an older woman who looked like she’d just gotten back from an African safari, seated in a bizarre chair made of horns.
“I don’t understand,” said Emma, peering at the photo. “Where’s
Ca’ab Magda?”
“Being sat upon,” said Addison. “The hunter fashioned her horns into a chair.”
Emma nearly dropped the album. “That’s disgusting!”
“If that’s her,” said Enoch, tapping the photo, “then what’s buried here?”
“The chair,” said Addison. “What a pitiful waste of a peculiar life.”
“This burying ground is filled with stories like Magda’s,” Addison said. “Miss Wren meant this menagerie to be an ark, but gradually it’s become a tomb.”
“Like all our loops,” said Enoch. “Like peculiardom itself. A failed experiment.”
“ ‘This place is dying,’ Miss Wren often said.” Addison’s voice rose in imitation of her. “ ‘And I am nothing but the overseer of its long funeral!’ ”
Addison’s eyes glistened, remembering her, but just as quickly went hard again. “She was very theatrical.”
“Please don’t refer to our ymbryne in the past tense,” Deirdre said.
“Is,” he said. “Sorry. Is.”
“They hunted you,” said Emma, her voice wavering with emotion. “Stuffed you and put you in zoos.”
“Just like the hunters did in Cuthbert’s story,” said Olive.
“Yes,” said Addison. “Some truths are expressed best in the form of myth.”
“But there was no Cuthbert,” said Olive, beginning to understand. “No giant. Just a bird.”
“A very special bird,” said Deirdre.
“You’re worried about her,” I said.
“Of course we are,” said Addison. “To my knowledge, Miss Wren is the only remaining uncaptured ymbryne. When she heard that her kidnapped sisters had been spirited away to London, she flew off to render assistance without a moment’s thought for her own safety.”
“Nor ours,” Deirdre muttered.
“London?” said Emma. “Are you sure that’s where the kidnapped ymbrynes were taken?”
“Absolutely certain,” the dog replied. “Miss Wren has spies in the city—a certain flock of peculiar pigeons who watch everything and report back to her. Recently, several came to us in a state of terrible distress. They had it on good information that the ymbrynes were—and still are—being held in the punishment loops.”
Several of the children gasped, but I had no idea what the dog meant. “What’s a punishment loop?” I asked.
“They were designed to hold captured wights, hardened criminals, and the dangerously insane,” Millard explained. “They’re nothing like the loops we know. Nasty, nasty places.”
“And now it is the wights, and undoubtedly their hollows, who are guarding them,” said Addison.
“Good God!” exclaimed Horace. “Then it’s worse than we feared!”
“Are you joking?” said Enoch. “This is precisely the sort of thing I feared!”
“Whatever nefarious end the wights are seeking,” Addison said, “it’s clear that they need all the ymbrynes to accomplish it. Now only Miss Wren is left … brave, foolhardy Miss Wren … and who knows for how long!” Then he whimpered the way some dogs do during thunderstorms, tucking his ears back and lowering his head.
* * *
We went back to the shade tree and finished our meals, and when we were stuffed and couldn’t eat another bite, Bronwyn turned to Addison and said, “You know, Mister Dog, everything’s not quite as dire as you say.” Then she looked at Emma and raised her eyebrows, and this time Emma nodded.
“Is that so,” Addison replied.
“Yes, it is. In fact, I have something right here that may just cheer you up.”
“I rather doubt that,” the dog muttered, but he lifted his head from his paws to see what it was anyway.
Bronwyn opened her coat and said, “I’d like you to meet the second-to-last uncaptured ymbryne, Miss Alma Peregrine.” The bird poked her head out into the sunlight and blinked.
Now it was the animals’ turn to be amazed. Deirdre gasped and Grunt squealed and clapped his hands and the chickens flapped their useless wings.
“But we heard your loop was raided!” Addison said. “Your ymbryne stolen!”
“She was,” Emma said proudly, “but we stole her back!”
“In that case,” said Addison, bowing to Miss Peregrine, “it is a most extraordinary pleasure, madam. I am your servant. Should you require a place to change, I’ll happily show you to Miss Wren’s private quarters.”
“She can’t change,” said Bronwyn.
“What’s that?” said Addison. “Is she shy?”
“No,” said Bronwyn. “She’s stuck.”
The pipe dropped from Addison’s mouth. “Oh, no,” he said quietly. “Are you quite certain?”
“She’s been like this for two days now,” said Emma. “I think if she could change back, she would’ve done it by now.”
Addison shook the glasses from his face and peered at the bird, his eyes wide with concern. “May I examine her?” he asked.
“He’s a regular Doctor Dolittle,” said the emu-raffe. “Addie treats us all when we’re sick.”
Bronwyn lifted Miss Peregrine out of her coat and set the bird on the ground. “Just be careful of her hurt wing,” she said.
“Of course,” said Addison. He began by making a slow circle around the bird, studying her from every angle. Then he sniffed her head and wings with his big, wet nose. “Tell me what happened to her,” he said finally, “and when, and how. Tell me all of it.”
Emma recounted the whole story: how Miss Peregrine was kidnapped by Golan, how she nearly drowned in her cage in the ocean, how we’d rescued her from a submarine piloted by wights. The animals listened, rapt. When we’d finished, the dog took a moment to gather his thoughts, then delivered his diagnosis: “She’s been poisoned. I’m certain of it. Dosed with something that’s keeping her in bird form artificially.”
“Really?” said Emma. “How do you know?”
“To kidnap and transport ymbrynes is a dangerous business when they’re in human form and can perform their time-stopping tricks. As birds, however, their powers are very limited. This way, your mistress is compact, easily hidden … much less of a threat.” He looked at Miss Peregrine. “Did the wight who took you spray you with anything?” he asked her. “A liquid or a gas?”
Miss Peregrine bobbed her head in the air—what seemed to be a nod.
Bronwyn gasped. “Oh, miss, I’m so awfully sorry. We had no idea.”
I felt a stab of guilt. I had led the wights to the island. I was the reason this had happened to Miss Peregrine. I had caused the peculiar children to lose their home, at least partly. The shame of it lodged like a stone in my throat.
I said, “She’ll get better though, won’t she? She’ll turn back?”
“Her wing will mend,” Addison replied, “but without help she won’t turn human again.”
“What sort of help does she need?” Emma asked. “Can you give it to her?”
“Only another ymbryne can assist her. And she’s running very short on time.”
I tensed. This was something new.
“What do you mean?” Emma said.
“I hate to be the bearer of bad news,” said Addison, “but two days is a very long time for an ymbryne to be arrested like this. The more time she spends as a bird, the more her human self will be lost. Her memory, her words—everything that made her who she was—until, eventually, she won’t be an ymbryne at all anymore. She’ll just be a bird, for good and ever.”
An image came to me of Miss Peregrine splayed on an emergency room table, buzzed around by doctors, her breathing stopped—every second that ticked by doing her brain some new and irreparable harm.
“How long?” asked Millard. “How much longer does she have?”
Addison squinted, shook his head. “Two days, if she’s strong.”
Whispers and gasps. We collectively went pale.
“Are you sure?” said Emma. “Are you absolutely, positively certain?”
“I’ve seen it happen before.” Addison padded over to the little owl, who was perched on a branch nearby. “Olivia here was a young ymbryne who had a bad accident during her training. They brought her to us five days later. Miss Wren and I did everything we could to try to change her back, but she was beyond help. That was ten years ago; she’s been this way ever since.”
The owl stared mutely. There was no life in her anymore beyond that of an animal; you could see it in the dullness of her eyes.
Emma stood. She seemed about to say something—to rally us, I hoped, kick us into action with some inspiring speech—but she couldn’t seem to get the words out. Choking back a sob, she stumbled away from us.
I called after her, but she didn’t stop. The others just watched her go, stunned by the terrible news; stunned, too, by any sign of weakness or indecision from Emma. She had maintained her strength in the face of all this for so long that we had come to take it for granted, but she wasn’t bulletproof. She might’ve been peculiar, but she was also human.
“You’d better fetch her, Mister Jacob,” Bronwyn said to me. “We mustn’t linger here too long.”
* * *
When I caught up to Emma she was standing near the plateau’s edge, gazing out at the countryside below, sloping green hills falling away to a distant plain. She heard me coming but didn’t turn to look.
I shuffled up next to her and tried to think of something comforting to say. “I know you’re scared, and—and three days doesn’t seem like a long time, but—”
“Two days,” she said. “Two days maybe.” Her lip trembled. “And that’s not even the worst of it.”
I balked. “How could things possibly be worse?”
She’d been waging a battle against tears, but now, in a sudden break, she lost it. She sank to the ground and sobbed, a storm overtaking her. I knelt and wrapped my arms around her and hung on. “I’m so sorry,” she said, repeating it three times, her voice raw, a fraying rope. “You never should’ve stayed. I shouldn’t have let you. But I was selfish … so terribly selfish!”
“Don’t say that,” I said. “I’m here—I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere.”
That only seemed to make her cry harder. I pressed my lips to her forehead and kissed it until the storm began to pass out of her, the sobs fading to whimpers. “Please talk to me,” I said. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
After a minute she sat up, wiped her eyes, and tried to compose herself. “I had hoped I’d never have to say this,” she said. “That it wouldn’t matter. Do you remember when I told you, the night you decided to come with us, that you might never be able to go home again?”
“Of course I do.”
“I didn’t know until just now how true that really was. I’m afraid I’ve doomed you, Jacob, my sweet friend, to a short life trapped in a dying world.” She drew a quivering breath, then continued. “You came to us through Miss Peregrine’s loop, and that means only Miss Peregrine or her loop can send you back. But her loop is gone now—or if it isn’t yet, it will be soon—which leaves Miss Peregrine herself as your only way home. But if she never turns human again …”
“They asked, and now I’m telling them,” said Addison. “Their bread will still be here in a few minutes!”
Reluctantly, we put down our food and followed the dog. Fiona stayed behind to watch Claire, who was still sleeping, and with Grunt and the emu-raffe loping after us, we crossed the plateau to the little patch of woods that grew at the far edge. A gravel path wound through the trees, and we crunched along it toward a clearing. Just before we reached it, Addison said, “May I introduce you to the finest peculiar animals who ever lived!” and the trees parted to reveal a small graveyard filled with neat rows of white headstones.
“Oh, no,” I heard Bronwyn say.
“There are probably more peculiar animals buried here than are currently alive in all of Europe,” Addison said, moving through the graves to reach one in particular, which he leaned on with his forepaws. “This one’s name was Pompey. She was a fine dog, and could heal wounds with a few licks of her tongue. A wonder to behold! And yet this is how she was treated.” Addison clicked his tongue and Grunt scurried forward with a little book in his hands, which he thrust into mine. It was a photo album, opened to a picture of a dog that had been harnessed, like a mule or a horse, to a little wagon. “She was enslaved by carnival folk,” Addison said, “forced to pull fat, spoiled children like some common beast of burden—whipped, even, with riding crops!” His eyes burned with anger. “By the time Miss Wren rescued her, Pompey was so depressed she was nearly dead from it. She lingered on for only a few weeks after she arrived, then was interred here.”
I passed the book around. Everyone who saw the photo sighed or shook their head or muttered bitterly to themselves.
Addison crossed to another grave. “Grander still was Ca’ab Magda,” he said, “an eighteen-tusked wildebeest who roamed the loops of Outer Mongolia. She was terrifying! The ground thundered under her hooves when she ran! They say she even marched over the Alps with Hannibal’s army in 218 BC. Then, some years ago, a hunter shot her.”
Grunt showed us a picture of an older woman who looked like she’d just gotten back from an African safari, seated in a bizarre chair made of horns.
“I don’t understand,” said Emma, peering at the photo. “Where’s
Ca’ab Magda?”
“Being sat upon,” said Addison. “The hunter fashioned her horns into a chair.”
Emma nearly dropped the album. “That’s disgusting!”
“If that’s her,” said Enoch, tapping the photo, “then what’s buried here?”
“The chair,” said Addison. “What a pitiful waste of a peculiar life.”
“This burying ground is filled with stories like Magda’s,” Addison said. “Miss Wren meant this menagerie to be an ark, but gradually it’s become a tomb.”
“Like all our loops,” said Enoch. “Like peculiardom itself. A failed experiment.”
“ ‘This place is dying,’ Miss Wren often said.” Addison’s voice rose in imitation of her. “ ‘And I am nothing but the overseer of its long funeral!’ ”
Addison’s eyes glistened, remembering her, but just as quickly went hard again. “She was very theatrical.”
“Please don’t refer to our ymbryne in the past tense,” Deirdre said.
“Is,” he said. “Sorry. Is.”
“They hunted you,” said Emma, her voice wavering with emotion. “Stuffed you and put you in zoos.”
“Just like the hunters did in Cuthbert’s story,” said Olive.
“Yes,” said Addison. “Some truths are expressed best in the form of myth.”
“But there was no Cuthbert,” said Olive, beginning to understand. “No giant. Just a bird.”
“A very special bird,” said Deirdre.
“You’re worried about her,” I said.
“Of course we are,” said Addison. “To my knowledge, Miss Wren is the only remaining uncaptured ymbryne. When she heard that her kidnapped sisters had been spirited away to London, she flew off to render assistance without a moment’s thought for her own safety.”
“Nor ours,” Deirdre muttered.
“London?” said Emma. “Are you sure that’s where the kidnapped ymbrynes were taken?”
“Absolutely certain,” the dog replied. “Miss Wren has spies in the city—a certain flock of peculiar pigeons who watch everything and report back to her. Recently, several came to us in a state of terrible distress. They had it on good information that the ymbrynes were—and still are—being held in the punishment loops.”
Several of the children gasped, but I had no idea what the dog meant. “What’s a punishment loop?” I asked.
“They were designed to hold captured wights, hardened criminals, and the dangerously insane,” Millard explained. “They’re nothing like the loops we know. Nasty, nasty places.”
“And now it is the wights, and undoubtedly their hollows, who are guarding them,” said Addison.
“Good God!” exclaimed Horace. “Then it’s worse than we feared!”
“Are you joking?” said Enoch. “This is precisely the sort of thing I feared!”
“Whatever nefarious end the wights are seeking,” Addison said, “it’s clear that they need all the ymbrynes to accomplish it. Now only Miss Wren is left … brave, foolhardy Miss Wren … and who knows for how long!” Then he whimpered the way some dogs do during thunderstorms, tucking his ears back and lowering his head.
* * *
We went back to the shade tree and finished our meals, and when we were stuffed and couldn’t eat another bite, Bronwyn turned to Addison and said, “You know, Mister Dog, everything’s not quite as dire as you say.” Then she looked at Emma and raised her eyebrows, and this time Emma nodded.
“Is that so,” Addison replied.
“Yes, it is. In fact, I have something right here that may just cheer you up.”
“I rather doubt that,” the dog muttered, but he lifted his head from his paws to see what it was anyway.
Bronwyn opened her coat and said, “I’d like you to meet the second-to-last uncaptured ymbryne, Miss Alma Peregrine.” The bird poked her head out into the sunlight and blinked.
Now it was the animals’ turn to be amazed. Deirdre gasped and Grunt squealed and clapped his hands and the chickens flapped their useless wings.
“But we heard your loop was raided!” Addison said. “Your ymbryne stolen!”
“She was,” Emma said proudly, “but we stole her back!”
“In that case,” said Addison, bowing to Miss Peregrine, “it is a most extraordinary pleasure, madam. I am your servant. Should you require a place to change, I’ll happily show you to Miss Wren’s private quarters.”
“She can’t change,” said Bronwyn.
“What’s that?” said Addison. “Is she shy?”
“No,” said Bronwyn. “She’s stuck.”
The pipe dropped from Addison’s mouth. “Oh, no,” he said quietly. “Are you quite certain?”
“She’s been like this for two days now,” said Emma. “I think if she could change back, she would’ve done it by now.”
Addison shook the glasses from his face and peered at the bird, his eyes wide with concern. “May I examine her?” he asked.
“He’s a regular Doctor Dolittle,” said the emu-raffe. “Addie treats us all when we’re sick.”
Bronwyn lifted Miss Peregrine out of her coat and set the bird on the ground. “Just be careful of her hurt wing,” she said.
“Of course,” said Addison. He began by making a slow circle around the bird, studying her from every angle. Then he sniffed her head and wings with his big, wet nose. “Tell me what happened to her,” he said finally, “and when, and how. Tell me all of it.”
Emma recounted the whole story: how Miss Peregrine was kidnapped by Golan, how she nearly drowned in her cage in the ocean, how we’d rescued her from a submarine piloted by wights. The animals listened, rapt. When we’d finished, the dog took a moment to gather his thoughts, then delivered his diagnosis: “She’s been poisoned. I’m certain of it. Dosed with something that’s keeping her in bird form artificially.”
“Really?” said Emma. “How do you know?”
“To kidnap and transport ymbrynes is a dangerous business when they’re in human form and can perform their time-stopping tricks. As birds, however, their powers are very limited. This way, your mistress is compact, easily hidden … much less of a threat.” He looked at Miss Peregrine. “Did the wight who took you spray you with anything?” he asked her. “A liquid or a gas?”
Miss Peregrine bobbed her head in the air—what seemed to be a nod.
Bronwyn gasped. “Oh, miss, I’m so awfully sorry. We had no idea.”
I felt a stab of guilt. I had led the wights to the island. I was the reason this had happened to Miss Peregrine. I had caused the peculiar children to lose their home, at least partly. The shame of it lodged like a stone in my throat.
I said, “She’ll get better though, won’t she? She’ll turn back?”
“Her wing will mend,” Addison replied, “but without help she won’t turn human again.”
“What sort of help does she need?” Emma asked. “Can you give it to her?”
“Only another ymbryne can assist her. And she’s running very short on time.”
I tensed. This was something new.
“What do you mean?” Emma said.
“I hate to be the bearer of bad news,” said Addison, “but two days is a very long time for an ymbryne to be arrested like this. The more time she spends as a bird, the more her human self will be lost. Her memory, her words—everything that made her who she was—until, eventually, she won’t be an ymbryne at all anymore. She’ll just be a bird, for good and ever.”
An image came to me of Miss Peregrine splayed on an emergency room table, buzzed around by doctors, her breathing stopped—every second that ticked by doing her brain some new and irreparable harm.
“How long?” asked Millard. “How much longer does she have?”
Addison squinted, shook his head. “Two days, if she’s strong.”
Whispers and gasps. We collectively went pale.
“Are you sure?” said Emma. “Are you absolutely, positively certain?”
“I’ve seen it happen before.” Addison padded over to the little owl, who was perched on a branch nearby. “Olivia here was a young ymbryne who had a bad accident during her training. They brought her to us five days later. Miss Wren and I did everything we could to try to change her back, but she was beyond help. That was ten years ago; she’s been this way ever since.”
The owl stared mutely. There was no life in her anymore beyond that of an animal; you could see it in the dullness of her eyes.
Emma stood. She seemed about to say something—to rally us, I hoped, kick us into action with some inspiring speech—but she couldn’t seem to get the words out. Choking back a sob, she stumbled away from us.
I called after her, but she didn’t stop. The others just watched her go, stunned by the terrible news; stunned, too, by any sign of weakness or indecision from Emma. She had maintained her strength in the face of all this for so long that we had come to take it for granted, but she wasn’t bulletproof. She might’ve been peculiar, but she was also human.
“You’d better fetch her, Mister Jacob,” Bronwyn said to me. “We mustn’t linger here too long.”
* * *
When I caught up to Emma she was standing near the plateau’s edge, gazing out at the countryside below, sloping green hills falling away to a distant plain. She heard me coming but didn’t turn to look.
I shuffled up next to her and tried to think of something comforting to say. “I know you’re scared, and—and three days doesn’t seem like a long time, but—”
“Two days,” she said. “Two days maybe.” Her lip trembled. “And that’s not even the worst of it.”
I balked. “How could things possibly be worse?”
She’d been waging a battle against tears, but now, in a sudden break, she lost it. She sank to the ground and sobbed, a storm overtaking her. I knelt and wrapped my arms around her and hung on. “I’m so sorry,” she said, repeating it three times, her voice raw, a fraying rope. “You never should’ve stayed. I shouldn’t have let you. But I was selfish … so terribly selfish!”
“Don’t say that,” I said. “I’m here—I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere.”
That only seemed to make her cry harder. I pressed my lips to her forehead and kissed it until the storm began to pass out of her, the sobs fading to whimpers. “Please talk to me,” I said. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
After a minute she sat up, wiped her eyes, and tried to compose herself. “I had hoped I’d never have to say this,” she said. “That it wouldn’t matter. Do you remember when I told you, the night you decided to come with us, that you might never be able to go home again?”
“Of course I do.”
“I didn’t know until just now how true that really was. I’m afraid I’ve doomed you, Jacob, my sweet friend, to a short life trapped in a dying world.” She drew a quivering breath, then continued. “You came to us through Miss Peregrine’s loop, and that means only Miss Peregrine or her loop can send you back. But her loop is gone now—or if it isn’t yet, it will be soon—which leaves Miss Peregrine herself as your only way home. But if she never turns human again …”
