A Map of Days (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children #4) - Ransom Riggs Page 0,64

wasn’t with us when we’d found it. He didn’t know.

“We weren’t sure if you wanted us to tell everyone,” said Bronwyn.

I started to explain but things soon devolved into a chaos of shouted questions, everyone talking over one another, until finally Emma had to flap her arms and shout for quiet. “Everyone, come into the living room. Jacob and I have a story to tell.”

We sat them down and proceeded to lay it all out—the discoveries we’d made the previous day at Abe’s house, the meeting we’d had with H, and the miniature quest he’d given us, along with a promise of a much more important one.

“You’re not actually considering this, are you?” said Horace.

“Damn right, we are,” I said. “And we want a couple of you to come with us.”

“We’re a team,” said Emma. “All of us.”

Their reactions were divided. Claire got angry and Horace got quiet and nervous. Hugh and Bronwyn were cautious, but I thought they could be swayed. Enoch, Millard, and Olive, on the other hand, seemed ready to jump in the car with us right then.

“Miss P’s been so good to us,” Claire said dourly. “We owe her more than this.”

“I agree,” said Bronwyn. “I won’t lie to her. I hate lying.”

“In my opinion, we’re much too concerned with what Miss Peregrine thinks,” said Emma.

“I think missions like the ones my grandfather and his group used to do are what we’re supposed to be doing,” I said. “Not glorified office work for the reconstruction.”

“I like my assignment,” said Hugh.

“But we’re wasted in the Acre,” said Millard. “We can go fearlessly into the present. Who else with our level of experience can do that?”

“She didn’t mean we should go now,” said Hugh. “We’ve only had one day of normalling lessons!”

“You could be ready,” I said.

“Half of us don’t even have modern clothes yet!” said Horace.

“We’ll figure it out!” I said. “Look, there are peculiar children in America who need our help, and I think that’s more important than rebuilding some loops.”

“Hear, hear,” said Emma.

“There’s one who needs help,” said Hugh. “Maybe. If this H fellow isn’t lying.”

“Abe’s logbook is filled with hundreds of missions,” I said, trying not to show my rising frustration, “half of which involved helping young peculiars in danger. Peculiars didn’t stop being born after Abe stopped working. They’re still out there, and they still need help.”

“They have no real ymbrynes of their own,” said Emma.

“This is why you’re here,” I said. “This is what we’re supposed to do. The hollow-hunters got old, the ymbrynes are too busy having meetings, and there’s no one more equipped to help than us. This is our time!”

“If we can just prove it to some guy we don’t even know!” Enoch said sarcastically.

“It’s a test,” I said. “And it’s one I intend to pass. Anybody who feels the same, be downstairs with a bag packed at nine a.m. sharp.”

I was packing a bag in my room later that night when my eyes stopped on something: the maps plastered on the wall above my bed. There were layers upon layers of them, taped and tacked over one another in a big mosaic that had become, over time, little more than wallpaper to me. But I noticed something now that grabbed my attention, and I stopped what I was doing to climb onto my bed. I stood on my pillows to study a little drawing that peeked out from under three intersecting National Geographic maps: a cartoon alligator sipping a cocktail.

I untacked the maps that were on top of it and peeled them away to find an old place mat from the Mel-O-Dee, the one with the map of Florida on it. The Mel-O-Dee used to give out crayons for kids to draw with while they ate, and my grandfather and I had used them to decorate this place mat. I had forgotten about that day, or that this map was even here. But now I saw what Abe had done—it was mostly his steady hand that had drawn on this map. Right in the center he had circled Mermaid Fantasyland, just as H’s wet glass had. Abe had also drawn a little skull and crossbones beside it. Deep in the Everglades swamp, he had doodled a school of fish with legs. (Or were they people with fish heads?) He had also drawn spiral shapes in several places around the state, and if I remembered the legend from Miss Peregrine’s now-lost Map of Days correctly, that meant LOOP HERE.