Hollow City

Emma flushed, but she declined to take Enoch’s bait. There were more important things to attend to now than petty conflicts—namely, the many exotic dangers of the journey we were about to undertake. “As I’m sure you’re all aware,” Emma said, “this is by most standards a very poor plan with little hope of success.” She laid out some of the reasons why. London was far away—not by the standards of the present-day world, maybe, when we might’ve GPSed our way to the nearest train station and caught an express that would’ve whisked us to the city center in a few hours. In 1940, though, in a Britain convulsed by war, London was a world away: the roads and rails might be clogged by refugees, or ruined by bombs, or monopolized by military convoys, any of which would cost us time Miss Peregrine didn’t have to spare. Worse, we would be hunted—and even more intensely than we had already been, now that nearly all the other ymbrynes had been captured.

“Forget the journey!” said Addison. “That’s the least of your worries! Perhaps I was not sufficiently dissuasive when we discussed this earlier. Perhaps you do not fully understand the circumstances of the ymbrynes’ incarceration.” He enunciated each syllable as if we were hard of hearing. “Haven’t any of you read about the punishment loops in your peculiar history books?”

“Of course we have,” said Emma.

“Then you’ll know that attempting to breach them is tantamount to suicide. They’re death traps, every one of them, containing the very bloodiest episodes from London’s history—the Great Fire of 1666; the exceedingly lethal Viking Siege of 842; the pestilent height of the terrible Plague! They don’t publish temporal maps of these places, for obvious reasons. So unless one of you has a working knowledge of the secretest parts of peculiardom …”

“I am a student of obscure and unpleasant loops,” Millard spoke up. “Been a pet hobby for many years.”

“Bully for you!” said Addison. “Then I suppose you have a way to get past the horde of hollows who’ll be guarding their entrances as well!”

Suddenly it felt like everyone’s eyes were on me. I swallowed hard, kept my chin high, and said, “Yeah, in fact, we do.”

“We’d better,” grumbled Enoch.

Then Bronwyn said, “I believe in you, Jacob. I haven’t known you too long, but I feel I know your heart, and it’s a strong, true thing—a peculiar heart—and I trust you.” She leaned against me and hugged my shoulder with one arm, and I felt my throat tighten.

“Thank you,” I said, feeling lame and small in the face of her big emotion.

The dog clucked his tongue. “Madness. You children have no self-preservation instincts at all. It’s a wonder any of you are still breathing.”

Emma stepped in front of Addison and tried to shut him down. “Yes, wonderful,” she said, “thank you for illuminating us with your opinion. Now, doomsaying aside, I have to ask the rest of you: Are there any objections to what we’re proposing? I don’t want anyone volunteering because they feel pressured.”

Slowly, timidly, Horace raised his hand. “If London is where all the wights are, won’t going there be walking right into their hands? Is that a good idea?”

“It’s a genius idea,” Enoch said irritably. “The wights are convinced we peculiar children are docile and weak. Us coming after them is the last thing they’d expect.”

“And if we fail?” said Horace. “We’ll have hand-delivered Miss Peregrine right to their doorstep!”

“We don’t know that,” said Hugh. “That London is their doorstep.”

Enoch snorted. “Don’t sugarcoat things. If they’ve broken open the prison loops and they’re using them to keep our ymbrynes, then you can bet your soft parts they’ve overrun the rest of the city, too! It’ll be absolutely crawling with them, mark my words. If it weren’t, the wights would never have bothered coming after us in little old Cairnholm. It’s basic military strategy. In battle you don’t aim for the enemy’s pinky toe first—you stab him right through the heart!”

“Please,” Horace moaned, “enough talk of smashing loops and stabbing hearts. You’ll frighten the little ones!”

“I ain’t scared!” said Olive.

Horace shrank into himself. Someone muttered the word coward.

“None of that!” Emma said sharply. “There’s nothing wrong with being frightened. It means you’re taking this very serious thing we’re proposing very seriously. Because, yes, it will be dangerous. Yes, the chances of success are abysmal. And should we even make it to London, there’s no guarantee we’ll be able to find the ymbrynes, much less rescue one. It’s entirely likely that we’ll end our days wasting away in some wightish prison cell or dissolved in the belly of a hollowgast. Everyone got that?”

Grim nods of understanding.

“Am I sugarcoating anything, Enoch?”

Enoch shook his head.