A Map of Days (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children #4) - Ransom Riggs Page 0,120
the car by now,” I said. “We’ll have to come back for it later.”
“If we live that long,” said Millard.
* * *
• • •
Minutes later we were riding a cramped subway car toward Manhattan. Was that the right way to go? We had jumped onto the first train that came, just to get away from the people hunting us. While my friends talked in hushed voices about who those people might have been—wights? Some hostile peculiar clan we knew nothing about?—I stood up and looked at the map on the wall of the subway car, routes branching out everywhere. We were supposed to take Noor to that island in the middle of a river—10044. Blackwell’s Island, it had said on the postcard. I asked Noor and Lilly if they knew where it was. Neither had heard of it. I had no phone reception to do a map search. And once we found the island, how would we find the loop? Loop entrances were rarely obvious.
But the more I thought about it, the less certain I felt about the plan. It was the mission we’d been given, but H’s sudden order to abort had thrown everything into doubt. What circumstances had changed? What had he been calling to warn me about, exactly? Was it the people who were hunting us that he’d been worried about, or was loop 10044 no longer safe?
What’s more, the subject of the mission was more than just the subject now. She was Noor, and she had a name and a story and a face (a very pretty one, at that); it was hard for me to imagine delivering her into the hands of strangers. Was I really supposed to dump her into some loop I knew nothing about, wash my hands of her, and head home?
I glanced over at her now, her scuffed Vans on the plastic bench seat and knees hugged to her chest, staring at the floor with a weariness the depth of which I could hardly fathom.
“Would you miss New York, if you had to leave?” I asked her.
It took five full seconds to draw herself out of whatever thought she’d been sunk in and look at me.
“Miss New York? Why?”
“Because I think you should come home with us, instead.”
Emma looked at me sharply, but it was Millard who objected aloud.
“That’s not the mission!”
“Forget the mission,” I said. “She’ll be safer with us than in any loop in this crazy city. Or on this side of the ocean.”
“We live in London, most of the time,” Emma explained. “In Devil’s Acre.”
Noor recoiled a bit.
“It’s not as bad as it sounds,” Millard said. “Once you get past the smell, anyway.”
“We’re nearly finished with this mission from hell,” said Enoch. “Let’s not muck it up now. Let’s just take her where she’s supposed to go and be done with it already.”
“We don’t know who’s in this loop we’re going to,” I said, “or how capable they are. Or anything.”
“Is that any of our concern?” said Enoch.
“I agree with Jacob,” said Millard. “There are almost no ymbrynes left in America, and it’s an ymbryne’s job to protect and shape uncontacted peculiars. Who’s going to teach her how to be peculiar?”
Noor raised her hand. “Is anyone going to fill me in here?”
“An ymbryne—they’re like teachers,” I said. “And protectors.”
“And government leaders,” said Millard, and then he added, under his breath, “though unelected . . .”
“And overbearing know-it-alls who are always minding other people’s business,” said Enoch.
“Essentially, the backbone of our whole society,” said Emma.
“We don’t need an ymbryne,” I said, “we just need someplace safe. Anyway, Miss Peregrine probably wants to kill us right now.”
“She’ll get over it,” Enoch said.
“So, would you come with us?” I asked Noor.
She sighed, then chuckled. “What the hell. I could use a vacation.”
“Hey, what about me?” Lilly said.
“You’d be more than welcome to come,” Millard said, a bit too eagerly. “Though normal people cannot enter loops, I’m afraid.”
“I can’t leave anyway!” Lilly said. “School just started.” Then she laughed and said, “God, listen to me. As if none of this insanity even happened. That’s how badly school has messed up my brain.”
“Well, education is important,” said Millard.
“But I have parents. Pretty good ones, actually. And they would worry about me a lot.”
“I’ll be back,” said Noor. “But getting out of town until this stuff blows over sounds like an excellent idea.”