A Map of Days (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children #4) - Ransom Riggs Page 0,86

a big, heavy thing needs a lot of momentum to get inside. You’d better go as fast as you can.”

I felt a smile forming on my face.

“Well. If I have to.”

“If you break the car, you’re fixing it this time,” Enoch grumbled.

“Oh, fun,” said Bronwyn, rubbing her hands together.

“Everybody hang on,” I said. “Ready?”

Paul leaned back out the window with the divining rod gripped in both hands, his back pressed against the doorjamb and his feet planted against the inside of the windshield. He looked at me and nodded.

“Ready.”

I revved the engine twice, let off the brake, jammed my foot down on the gas. We took off through the field. Suddenly everything was vibrating—the car, the steering wheel, my teeth.

“To the right!” Paul shouted, and I veered right, around a corn pyramid.

“Left!” he said, leaning way out the window.

The tires sprayed jets of dirt behind us. Stands of unharvested corn drummed the car’s undercarriage and slapped against Paul’s body.

“Now stay straight!” he yelled.

We were aimed directly at one of the corn pyramids, which was fast approaching.

“I have to turn!” I shouted.

“Straight, I said! Straight!”

I fought an overwhelming instinct to cut the wheel. The corn pyramid came rushing toward us, and everyone but Paul screamed. There was an instant of blackness, like a missing frame in a movie, then a moment of weightlessness, and a pressure change. Then the corn pyramid was gone, and the field we were hurtling through was nothing but dirt.

Paul pulled himself back inside the car and shouted, “Okay, okay, brake, brake, YOU SHOULD BRAKE,” and I hit the brake as we crested a rise. All four wheels of the car left the ground for a second, and when we landed again I felt the car bottom out before we skidded to a stop.

“Ughhhhh,” Millard groaned from the back seat.

Dust swirled in the air. The engine ticked. We had come to rest by an old red barn at the edge of a little town.

Paul opened his door and stepped out. “Welcome to Portal!”

“Oh, thank Hades,” said Millard. He shoved his way out of the car, and a moment later I heard him throwing up.

Everyone got out, grateful to have solid ground beneath their feet. The car’s windows had been open as we barreled through the field, and now everyone was covered in a film of dust and sweat. I raked a hand down my face and my fingers came away gritty.

“Now you’ve got stripes,” Emma said, using her sleeve to wipe my cheek.

“You can clean up at my house,” said Paul, and he waved us after him.

* * *

• • •

We followed him into town. It was all of three blocks from end to end and looked as if had been made entirely, but expertly, by hand, from the houses to the packed-dirt streets to the wooden sidewalks. It was 1935 here, Paul explained, and the loop at Portal had been made in the worst depths of the Great Depression. Despite all that, it was neat as a pin, and everywhere someone could’ve planted flowers or painted a happy color it had been done, and the dozen or so people I saw walking were all dressed to the nines. It was a cheerful, homey place, and I already wished we didn’t have to leave in such a hurry.

“Paul Hemsley!” someone shouted.

“Uh-oh,” I heard Paul mutter.

A teenage girl came running toward him. She wore a crisp white dress and a fashionable floppy hat, and there was fire in her eyes. “You don’t call, you don’t write—”

“Sorry I’m late, Alene.”

“Late!” She took off the hat and swatted him with it. “You’ve been gone two years!”

“I got hung up.”

“I’m ’bout to hang you up,” she said, and he leapt off the sidewalk as she swatted at him again. She huffed, then turned to us and nodded. “Alene Norcross. Pleased to meet you.”

Before any of us could reply, two other girls who looked about Alene’s age ran up. Paul introduced them as June and Fern, his sisters. They wrapped Paul in fierce embraces, berated him for being gone so long, then turned to us.

“Thank you for bringing him back,” said Fern. “I hope he didn’t cause you too much trouble.”

“Not at all,” I said. “He did us a huge favor.”

“Yeah!” said Bronwyn. “We needed to find this place, but we thought we were looking for an actual portal, not a town called Portal, because we have this—oww!”

Emma had pinched her on the arm, and now she walked on tiptoes to