Hollow City (Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children, #2)(36)

Finally, campfires dwindling, they laid out sleeping rolls for us and sang a lullaby in a lilting foreign language, and I felt pleasantly like a child. The ventriloquist came to say good night to Emma. She shooed him away, but not before he left a calling card. On the back was an address in Cardiff where he picked up mail every few months, whenever the Gypsies stopped through. On the front was his photo, with dummies, and a little note written to Emma. She showed it to me and snickered, but I felt bad for the guy. He was guilty only of liking her, same as me.





I curled up with Emma in a sleeping roll at the forest’s edge. Just as we were drifting off, I heard footsteps in the grass nearby, and opened my eyes to see no one at all. It was Millard, back again after having spent the evening talking with the Gypsy boy.

“He wants to come with us,” said Millard.

“Who?” Emma mumbled groggily. “Where?”

“The boy. With us.”

“And what did you say?”

“I told him it was a bad idea. But I didn’t say no, precisely.”

“You know we can’t take on anyone else,” Emma said. “He’ll slow us down.”

“I know, I know,” said Millard. “But he’s disappearing very rapidly, and he’s frightened. Soon he’ll be entirely invisible, and he’s afraid he’ll fall behind their group one day and the Gypsies won’t notice and he’ll be lost forever in the woods among the wolves and spiders.”

Emma groaned and rolled over to face Millard. He wasn’t going to let us sleep until this was decided. “I know he’ll be disappointed,” she said. “But it’s really impossible. I’m sorry, Mill.”

“Fair enough,” Millard said heavily. “I’ll give him the news.”

He rose and slipped away.

Emma sighed, and for a while she tossed and turned, restless.

“You did the right thing,” I whispered. “It isn’t easy being the one everybody looks to.”

She said nothing, but snuggled into the hollow of my chest. Gradually we drifted off, the whispers of breeze-blown branches and the breathing of horses gentling us to sleep.

*

It was a night of thin sleep and bad dreams, spent much as I’d spent the previous day: being chased by packs of nightmare dogs. By morning I was worn out. My limbs felt heavy as wood, my head cottony. I might’ve felt better if I hadn’t slept at all.

Bekhir woke us at dawn. “Rise and shine, syndrigasti!” he shouted, tossing out hunks of brick-hard bread. “There’ll be time for sleeping when you’re dead!”

Enoch knocked his bread against a rock and it clacked like wood. “We’ll be dead soon enough, with breakfast like this!”

Bekhir roughed Enoch’s hair, grinning. “Ahh, come on. Where’s your peculiar spirit this morning?”

“In the wash,” said Enoch, covering his head with the sleeping roll.

Bekhir gave us ten minutes to prepare for the ride to town. He was making good on his promise and would have us there before the morning’s first train. I got up, stumbled to a bucket of water, splashed some on my face, brushed my teeth with my finger. Oh, how I missed my toothbrush. How I longed for my minty floss, my ocean-breeze-scented deodorant stick. What I wouldn’t have given, just then, to find a Smart Aid store.

My kingdom for a pack of fresh underwear!

As I raked bits of hay from my hair with my fingers and bit into a loaf of inedible bread, the Gypsies and their children watched us with mournful faces. It was as if they knew, somehow, that the previous night’s fun had been a last hurrah, and now we were being led off to the gallows. I tried to cheer one of them up. “It’s okay,” I said to a towheaded little boy who seemed on the verge of tears. “We’re going to be fine.”

He looked at me as if I were a talking ghost, his eyes wide and uncertain.





Eight horses were rounded up, and eight Gypsy riders—one for each of us. Horses would get us to town much faster than a caravan of wagons could. They were also terrifying to me.

I’d never ridden a horse. I was probably the only marginally rich kid in America who hadn’t. It wasn’t because I didn’t think horses were beautiful, majestic creatures, the pinnacle of animal creation, etc., etc.—it’s just that I didn’t believe any animal had the slightest interest in being mounted or ridden by a human being. Besides, horses were very large, with rippling muscles and big, grinding teeth, and they looked at me as if they knew I was afraid and were hoping for an opportunity to kick my head in. Not to mention the lack of a seatbelt on a horse—no secondary restraint systems of any kind—and yet horses could go nearly as fast as cars but were much bouncier. So the whole endeavor just seemed inadvisable.

I said none of this, of course. I shut up and set my jaw and hoped I’d live at least long enough to die in a more interesting way than by falling off a horse.

From the first giddyap! we were at full gallop. I abandoned my dignity right away and bear-hugged the Gypsy man on the saddle in front of me who held the reins—so quickly that I didn’t have a chance to wave goodbye to the Gypsies who had gathered to see us off. Which was just as well: goodbyes had never been my strong suit anyway, and lately my life had felt like an unbroken series of them. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.