A Map of Days (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children, #4)(37)
“I’m surprised you chose this particular building for the ministry offices,” Emma said to Miss Cuckoo. “Are you comfortable here?”
Miss Cuckoo laughed. “Not at all, but that is intentional. None of our displaced wards are comfortable in Devil’s Acre, so neither should we be. This way, everyone is motivated to keep the reconstruction effort moving along efficiently, so we can get out of here and back to our loops as quickly as possible.”
I wasn’t sure how efficient a workforce could be if it had to spend half its time battling rats and dripping ceilings, but it was a noble sentiment. If the ymbrynes and officials had set themselves up in some golden palace, it would have looked bad. There was a certain honor in the rat battles.
“Now, as you can imagine, there is plenty of reconstruction work right here in London,” Miss Cuckoo was saying, “and in this peculiar labor market of ours, you are all very hot commodities. We need cooks, guards, people who can lift heavy things.” She pointed to Bronwyn. “There are several departments clamoring for Miss Bruntley’s help. Salvage and Demolition, the Wardening and Guardening force . . .”
I glanced quickly at Bronwyn, and I could see her smile fading.
“Come now, Bronwyn,” said Miss Peregrine. “That’s certainly better than clearing rubble!”
“I was hoping to be assigned to the expeditionary force in America,” Bronwyn said.
“There is no expeditionary force in America.”
“Not yet. But I could help create one.”
“With ambition like that, I don’t doubt you will,” said Miss Cuckoo. “But we must season you a bit before we send you to the front lines.”
Bronwyn looked as if she wanted to say more, and she might have if it were only Miss Peregrine she was talking to. But in front of Miss Cuckoo, she held her tongue.
Miss Cuckoo pointed to the space beside me, where Millard’s coat and pants bobbed along in the air. “Mr. Nullings, you have a plum job offer from Peculiar Intelligence—invisibles always make top field agents.”
“Wouldn’t the Ministry of Mapping be a better fit?” Millard replied. “Any invisible can sneak around and overhear secrets, but I’d wager my cartographic expertise is equal to anyone’s.”
“It may be, but Intelligence is understaffed and Mapping is full up. I’m sorry. Now, please go report to Mr. Kimble in Intelligence, room three-oh-one.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Millard said, the excitement in his voice gone.He turned and walked the other way down the hall.
Miss Cuckoo indicated a large, high-ceilinged office we were passing where half a dozen men and women were combing through stacks of mail. “Mr. O’Connor, I’m sure the Dead Letters Office would appreciate your help.”
Enoch looked crestfallen. “Sorting undeliverable mail? What about my talent?”
“Our Dead Letters Office doesn’t handle undeliverable mail. It deals with correspondence to and from the dead.”
One of the workers held up an envelope smudged with grave mud. “Their handwriting is rubbish,” the man said. “And their grammar is even worse. It takes a regular scientist to sort out who these letters are meant for.” He tipped the envelope, and a small pile of worms and bugs poured out of it. “Now and then we’d like to go back to the source and ask them, but none of us can dead-rise.”
“The dead write letters to one another?” Emma said.
“They’re always asking after people and wanting to send news to old friends,” Enoch said. “They’re right gossips, half of them. If I have time, sometimes I’ll let ’em write a postcard before they go back in the ground.”
“Think about it!” the man said. “We’re always shorthanded.”
“I’m not!” said a worker in the back, and he raised one freakishly long arm, brushed the ceiling with his fingers, then began to cackle as we walked away.
Miss Cuckoo was waving at us to hurry up.
“Miss Bloom, I could easily place you in the Warden’s office. You would make an excellent prison guard for our most dangerous wights. But Miss Peregrine tells me you’ve developed another interest of late?”
“Yes, miss. Photography. I’ve already got a handheld flash . . .”
She held up her palm and sparked a flame. Miss Cuckoo laughed.
“That’s very good. We will surely want qualified photographists to document things as we reestablish contact with the American colonies. For the moment, though, your pyrogenic skills are still most useful to us as a weapon, so I’d like to keep you on call for security emergencies.”
“Oh,” she said, clearly disappointed but trying to hide it.
Emma gave me a resigned look, like she’d been foolish to expect more. Her abilities with fire were so powerful that it put her in a box, peculiarly speaking, and I could see the limits of it beginning to gnaw at her.
After a few minutes, everyone had been given a task that sounded, if not always super cool or vital to the cause, at least relevant to their peculiar skills. Except me. One by one, my friends peeled off to consult with whichever ministry official they’d been assigned to, and I was alone with Miss Cuckoo and Miss Peregrine. We came into a large conservatory, the walls a puzzle of windows suffocated from the outside by vines. The room was dominated by a huge black conference table embossed with the ymbrynes’ official seal—a bird with a watch dangling from its mouth, one talon pinning down a snake. This was the chamber of the Council of Ymbrynes, where they held their meetings and decided our futures, and I felt a strange sort of reverence, being there, even if it was only a temporary space. The only bit of decoration in the room was a series of maps tacked onto the lower windows.