A Map of Days (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children, #4)(40)

“So, what’s your assignment?” Emma asked me.

As they buoyed me away toward the exit, I looked back at the man. He was sitting very still, watching me go, brow furrowed with worry.

Miss Peregrine took me aside. “We’ll have a talk very soon, just you and me,” she said. “I’m very sorry if your feelings were stepped on in our meeting. It’s very important to me, and all the ymbrynes, that you feel fulfilled. But the American situation is, as we mentioned, a sticky one.”

“I just want you guys to have faith in me. I’m not asking to be the captain of an army, or something.” I’m not asking for anything anymore, I thought, but did not say.

“I know,” she said. “But please be patient. And please believe that if we seem overly cautious, it’s for your own safety. If anything was to happen to you—or any of you—it would be a disaster.”

I had an uncharitable thought: that what she really meant was it would look bad if something happened to me, just like it would look bad if we didn’t help the reconstruction effort in a way that was visible to everyone in Devil’s Acre. I knew that wasn’t her whole rationale. Of course she cared about us. But she also cared about the opinions of people who were strangers to me, and what they thought about how I lived my life—and I did not.

But instead of saying any of that, I said, “Okay, no problem, I understand,” because I knew there was no changing her mind about this.

She smiled and thanked me, and I felt a little bad for lying to her—but not too bad—and then she bid us goodbye.

The clock had just ticked past noon in Devil’s Acre. Miss Peregrine had some business left to take care of here, but ours was done for the day, so we were to meet her at my house later on.

“Go directly there,” she warned us. “Do not loiter, linger, dally, or dawdle.”

“Yes, Miss Peregrine,” we chorused.





We didn’t go directly. I asked the others if we could find a route that avoided some of the thickest crowds, and in the spirit of exploration and mild disobedience, they agreed. Enoch claimed to know a fast way that was almost sure to be deserted, and a minute later we were tracing the banks of the river, Fever Ditch.

This part of the Acre had not been cleaned up like the center had been. Perhaps it was not cleanable. Devil’s Acre was a loop, so the basic environmental facts of the place would reset themselves daily. The Ditch would always be a brown and polluted ribbon of filth. What sun was able to filter down through the pall of factory smoke that hung above us would always be the color of weak tea. The normals who were stuck here, part of the endlessly repeating scenery, would always be the same miserable, half-starved wretches who peered suspiciously at us from the alleys and tenement windows we were now passing. Millard said that somewhere there must have been a map of all the murders, assaults, and robberies that took place the day Devil’s Acre was looped, so those dangerous places could be avoided, but none of us had ever seen it. Everyone knew to be careful when passing through the normal regions. For as long as we could stand the smell, we hugged the edge of the Ditch to avoid passing too close to the dark buildings.

When they were not glancing nervously around them, my friends discussed their new assignments. Most of them sounded disappointed. A few sounded bitter.

“I should be charting maps of America!” Millard grumbled. “Perplexus Anomalous is head of the blasted Mapping Department now. If the ymbrynes don’t think they owe us anything for all we did, he surely does.”

“Then you should appeal directly to him,” said Hugh.

“I’ll do that,” Millard said.

Enoch, once his initial excitement had worn off, had realized that his job in the Dead Letters Office was about 5 percent dead-rising, 95 percent filing. “How can they stick us with grunt work, after what we pulled off in the Library of Souls?” he said. “We saved the ymbrynes’ hides. They should either let us have a nice long holiday, or give us shiny jobs with loads of underlings beneath us.”

“I wouldn’t say it precisely that way,” said Horace. “But I agree. Assistant to the anachronist in the Costumes Department? I should be advising the Ymbryne Council on strategy, at the very least. I can see the future, for birds’ sake!”

“I thought Miss Peregrine believed in us,” said Olive.

“She does,” said Bronwyn. “It’s the other ymbrynes. They don’t know us as well.”

“They’re threatened by us,” said Enoch. “These assignments? They’re meant to send a message. You’re still just peculiar children.”

Emma sidled up to me, and we trudged side by side. I asked her how her assignment meeting had gone.

“Look at this,” Emma said, pulling a slim rectangular box from her bag. “It’s a folding camera.” She flipped a switch and a lens accordioned out of the body.

“So they gave you the job you wanted, after all? Documenting things?”

“Nah,” she said. “I nicked it from the equipment room. They gave me three shifts a week guarding ymbrynes during wight interrogations.”

“That could be interesting, though. You might hear some crazy things.”

“I don’t want to hear all that. Going over all their crimes and what they did to us for years and years . . . I’m tired of rehashing ancient history. I want to see new places, meet new people. What about you?”