A Map of Days (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children, #4)(81)

I went back to gather my friends. I saw Emma talking close with June and strode across the grass toward them. Before they noticed me, June seemed to be explaining something that didn’t please Emma, and Emma was standing with her arms crossed. Her face was drawn and serious. When she saw me, her expression blanked, and she said a quick goodbye to June and ran to meet me.

“What was that about?” I asked.

“Just trading darkroom tips. Did you know she printed most of the photos in that album herself?”

It was clearly a lie, and it had come to her so quickly that I was taken by surprise.

“Then why do you look upset?” I asked.

“I’m not.”

“You were asking her about the girl. The one Abe traveled with sometimes.”

“No,” said Emma. “I don’t care about that.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

Her eyes cut away. “Quit giving me the third degree, will you? Here come Bronwyn and Enoch.”

Millard was with them, too—he had put on clothes and was easy to spot—and June and Fern and Paul, with whom they’d all made fast friends.

“We’ll talk about this later,” I said.





Emma shrugged. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

I nearly lost my temper, but managed to tamp it down. I told myself I would never understand what Emma was feeling, and if I wanted to be with her, I needed to respect that she was going through something and give her space to feel it.

That made sense. But it didn’t make me feel less hurt.

We made plans to leave. Paul arrived carrying a metal thermos.

“Coffee for your trip. So you don’t have to stop.”

Elmer came by and shook our hands. “If any of you ever need a diviner, you know where to find us.”

“What an interesting man,” said Millard as he walked away. “Did you know he fought in three wars over seventy years? During the Great War he slept in a loop at the trenches in Verdun so he wouldn’t age forward.”

Bronwyn and Fern hugged.

“You’ll write?” said Fern.

“Even better, we’ll visit,” said Bronwyn.

“We’d like that.”

They said goodbye, and Paul walked us back to the edge of town, and our car. Along the way, I showed everyone the pack of matches Miss Annie had given me.

“An address!” said Millard. “H made it easy on us this time.”

“I think the tests are over,” I said. “It’s time for the real mission.”

“We’ll see,” said Emma. “H never seems to get tired of testing us.”

“You all be careful out there,” Paul said. “And watch yourselves up north. I hear it’s every bit as dangerous.”

He explained how to get back to the present. There was no returning to 1965—not that we would’ve wanted to—because exiting the back way out of this loop would get us to a spring day in 1930, when the Portal loop was made. Leaving the front way was simple: We had to go out the same way we’d come in—through the fields, and fast.

We said goodbye to Paul. I made sure everyone was belted in, started the car, and punched the gas. The car shook as I followed my tire tracks back across the bare field, speeding faster and faster even as the terrain grew rougher. Halfway across, just as we reached the spot where we had entered the loop and my tire tracks disappeared, there was a gut-wrenching lurch. Day turned to night. The flat dirt before me turned into a wall of green cornstalks. We crashed through them, flattening row after row as the stalks and green cobs hammered the car. I was about to slam on the brakes when I heard Millard yell, “Keep going or we’ll get stuck!” so I pushed even harder on the gas, and the engine bellowed and somehow the tires found traction, and a few seconds later we broke through the corn and onto a road.

I stopped. We caught our breaths. I turned on the headlights. The dirt road was paved now, but otherwise the outskirts of Portal looked much the same as in 1965.

I got out to inspect the damage, and Millard got out to throw up. There was a crack at the top edge of the windshield and shredded cornstalks stuck in the grille and the wheel wells, which I was able to pull out. Other than that, we had made it in one piece.

“Everyone okay?” I said, poking my head through the window.

“Millard’s not,” said Emma, and then I heard a retching sound and looked up just in time to see an air-burst of vomit splatter the pavement. I had never seen an invisible person throw up before, and it was something I won’t soon forget.

As he was voiding his guts, I felt my phone—alive again here in the present—buzz madly in my pocket. 24 missed calls, the screen read. 23 voicemails.

I knew who they were from without even looking.

I walked around to the rear of the car and pretended to check something while I surreptitiously listened. The first few messages were mildly concerned. But they got more alarmed and more angry as they went on. The thirteenth went like this: “Mr. Portman, this is your ymbryne speaking. Again. I want you to listen to me very carefully. I am disappointed that you would embark on a journey without informing me. Exceedingly so. But you have no right to take the children with you without my say-so. Return to this house at once. Thank you. All the best.”

I stopped listening after that. I thought about telling the others, then decided against it. They had all known Miss Peregrine wouldn’t approve; there was no reason to agitate them with the voicemails and risk having them decide to turn back.