A Map of Days (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children #4) - Ransom Riggs Page 0,38

it was impossible to tell whether or not he regretted the death of his former employer. “So I’m afraid you’re stuck with me.”

We turned another corner and came into a wide hallway. It was as busy as an airline terminal at the holidays: Travelers laden with heavy bags came and went through doors that lined both walls. Long lines trailed away from podiums where uniformed clerks checked documents. Gruff border guards kept watch over everyone.

Sharon barked at a nearby clerk. “Keep that door shut! You’re letting in half of Helsinki, Christmas of 1911!”

The clerk snapped up from his chair and slammed a door that had been open a crack, out from which snowflakes had been drifting.

“We’re making sure people travel only to loops they’ve been approved to visit,” Sharon explained. “There are over a hundred loop doors in these halls, and the Ministry of Temporal Affairs has declared fewer than half of them safe. Many have not been sufficiently explored; some haven’t been opened in years. So, until further notice, all Panloopticon trips must be cleared by the ministry—and yours truly.”

Sharon snatched a ticket from the hand of a mousy fellow in a brown trench coat. “Who are you and where are you going?” He was clearly delighted to have been given some authority, and couldn’t help showing it off.

“My name’s Wellington Weebus,” the man lisped. “Destination Pennsylvania Station, New York City, June 8, 1929. Sir.”

“What’s your business there?”

“Sir, I’m a linguistical outreach officer assigned to the American colonies. I’m a translator.”

“Why would we need a translator in New York City? Don’t they speak the King’s English?”

“Not exactly, sir. They have a rather odd way of speaking, actually, sir.”

“Why the umbrella?”

“It’s raining there, sir.”

“Have your clothes been vetted for anachronisms by the Costumers?”

“They have, sir.”

“I thought all New Yorkers of that era wore hats.”

The man pulled a small cap from his trench coat. “I have one here, sir.”

Miss Peregrine, who had been tapping her foot for some time now, reached the end of her fuse. “If you’re needed here, Sharon, I’m sure we can find our own way to the ministries building.”

“I won’t hear of it!” he said, then handed back the man’s ticket. “Look sharp, Weebus, I’m watching you.”

The man scurried off.

“This way, children. It isn’t far.”

He cleared a path for us through the crowded hall, then led us down a flight of stairs. On the ground floor we passed Bentham’s grand library, where the furniture had been cleared away to make room for a hundred or more cots.

“That’s where we used to sleep, until we came to live with you,” Emma said to me. “Ladies in that room, men in this one.”

We passed what had formerly been a dining room, now crowded with even more cots. The whole bottom floor of Bentham’s house had been turned into a shelter for displaced peculiars.

“Were you comfortable there?” I asked.

A dumb question.

Emma shrugged; she didn’t like to complain. “It’s certainly better than sleeping in a wightish prison,” she said.

“Not much better,” said Horace—who loved to complain and had sidled up to me the moment he sensed an opportunity. “Let me tell you, Jacob, it was awful. Not everyone takes their personal hygiene as seriously as we do. Some nights I had to plug my nose with camphor sticks! And there isn’t any privacy, nor any wardrobes nor dressing rooms nor proper washing-rooms, even, and not an ounce of creativity coming out of the kitchen”—we were passing it now, and through the door I could see a battalion of cooks chopping things and stirring pots—“and so many of these poor devils from other loops have nightmares that you can hardly sleep at night for all the moaning and screaming!”

“You’re one to talk,” said Emma. “You wake up screaming twice a week!”

“Yes, but at least my dreams mean something,” he said.

“You know, there’s a girl in America who can remove nightmares,” I heard Millard say. “Perhaps she could be of assistance.”

“There is no one in the world qualified to manipulate my dreams,” Horace said testily.

Emma’s letters to me had been so breezy and cheerful, always focused on the happy times and the little adventures they were having. She had never mentioned the living conditions here or their daily struggles, and I felt a surge of new respect for her resilience.

Sharon threw open the huge oaken door at the end of the hallway. Street noise and daylight flooded in.

“Stay together!” Miss Peregrine shouted, and then we were outside, plunging into the flow of bodies