Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children #1) - Ransom Riggs Page 0,104

cold,” Claire said, and enough of the others agreed this was plausible that it was decided we would go back to the house, treat Millard with what supplies we had, and hope that with some time to rest, both the headmistress and her loop would return to normal.

Chapter Eleven

We marched up the steep trail and across the ridge like a company of war-weary veterans, single file, heads down, Bronwyn carrying Millard in her arms and Miss Peregrine riding the nestlike crown of Fiona’s hair. The landscape was gouged with smoking craters, fresh-turned earth thrown everywhere as if some giant dog had been digging at it. We all wondered what awaited us back at the house, but no one dared to ask.

We had our answer even before clearing the forest. Enoch’s foot kicked something, and he bent down to look. It was half a charred brick.

Panic broke out. The children began to sprint down the path. When they reached the lawn, the younger ones broke out in tears. There was smoke everywhere. The bomb had not come to rest atop Adam’s finger, as it usually did, but had split him straight down the middle and exploded. The back corner of the house had been reduced to a slumped and smoking ruin. Small fires burned in the charred shell of two rooms. Where Adam had been was a raw crater deep enough to bury a person upright. It was easy now to picture what this place would one day become: that sad and desecrated wreck I had first discovered weeks ago. The nightmare house.

Miss Peregrine leapt from Fiona’s hair and began to race around on the scorched grass, squawking in alarm.

“Headmistress, what happened?” Olive said. “Why hasn’t the changeover come?”

Miss Peregrine could only screech in reply. She seemed as confused and frightened as the rest of us.

“Please turn back!” begged Claire, kneeling before her.

Miss Peregrine flapped and jumped and seemed to be straining herself, but still couldn’t shift her shape. The children crowded around in concern.

“Something’s wrong,” Emma said. “If she could turn human, she would’ve done it by now.”

“Perhaps that’s why the loop slipped,” Enoch suggested. “Remember that old story about Miss Kestrel, when she was thrown from her bicycle in a road accident? She knocked her head and stayed a kestrel for a whole entire week. That’s when her loop slipped.”

“What’s that got to do with Miss Peregrine?”

Enoch sighed. “Maybe she’s only injured her head and we just need to wait a week for her to come to her senses.”

“A speeding lorry’s one thing,” Emma said. “Being abused by wights is quite another. There’s no knowing what that bastard did to Miss Peregrine before we got to her.”

“Wights? As in plural?”

“It was wights who took Miss Avocet,” I said.

“How do you know that?” demanded Enoch.

“They were working with Golan, weren’t they? And I saw the eyes of the one who shot at us. There’s no question.”

“Then Miss Avocet’s as good as dead,” said Hugh. “They’ll kill her for sure.”

“Maybe not,” I replied. “At least not right away.”

“If there’s one thing I know about wights,” said Enoch, “it’s that they kill peculiars. It’s their nature. It’s what they do.”

“No, Jacob’s right,” said Emma. “Before that wight died, he told us why they’ve been abducting so many ymbrynes. They’re going to force them to re-create the reaction that made the hollows in the first place—only bigger. Much bigger.”

I heard someone gasp. Everyone else fell silent. I looked around for Miss Peregrine and saw her perched forlornly on the edge of Adam’s crater.

“We’ve got to stop them,” Hugh said. “We’ve got to find out where they’re taking the ymbrynes.”

“How?” said Enoch. “Follow a submarine?”

Behind me a throat cleared loudly, and we turned to see Horace sitting cross-legged on the ground. “I know where they’re going,” he said quietly.

“What do you mean, you know?”

“Never mind how he knows, he knows,” said Emma. “Where are they taking her, Horace?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know the name,” he said, “but I’ve seen it.”

“Then draw it,” I said.

He thought for a moment and then rose stiffly. Looking like a beggar evangelist in his torn black suit, he shuffled to an ash pile that had spilled from the cracked-open house and bent to gather a palm full of soot. Then, in the soft light of the moon, he began to paint on a broken wall with broad strokes.

We gathered around to watch. He made a row of bold vertical stripes topped with thin loops, like bars and