Hollow City (Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children, #2)(57)

Bronwyn nodded sadly. She’d known it was true but had needed to hear it said. We were barely here, ineffectual as ghosts.

A cloud of ash billowed, blotting out fireman and child. We went on, choking in an eddy of windborne wreck dust, powdered concrete blanching our clothes, our faces bone white.





*

We hurried past the ruined blocks as quickly as we could, then marveled as the streets returned to life around us. Just a short walk from Hell, people were going about their business, striding down sidewalks, living in buildings that still had electricity and windows and walls. Then we rounded a corner and the cathedral’s dome revealed itself, proud and imposing despite patches of fire-blackened stone and a few crumbling arches. Like the spirit of the city itself, it would take more than a few bombs to topple St. Paul’s.

Our hunt began in a square close to the cathedral, where old men on benches were feeding pigeons. At first it was mayhem: we bounded in, grabbing wildly as the pigeons took off. The old men grumbled, and we withdrew to wait for their return. They did, eventually, pigeons not being the smartest animals on the planet, at which point we all took turns wading casually into the flock and trying to catch them by surprise, reaching down to snatch at them. I thought Olive, who was small and quick, or Hugh, with his peculiar connection to another sort of winged creature, might have some luck, but both were humiliated. Millard didn’t fare any better, and they couldn’t even see him. By the time my turn came, the pigeons must’ve been sick of us bothering them, because the moment I strolled into the square they all burst into flight and took one big, simultaneous cluster-bomb crap, which sent me flailing toward a water fountain to wash my whole head.

In the end, it was Horace who caught one. He sat down next to the old men, dropping seeds until the birds circled him. Then, leaning slowly forward, he stretched out his arm and, calm as could be, snagged one by its feet.

“Got you!” he cried.

The bird flapped and tried to get away, but Horace held on tight.





He brought it to us. “How can we tell if it’s peculiar?” he said, flipping the bird over to inspect its bottom, as if expecting to find a label there.

“Show it to Miss Peregrine,” Emma said. “She’ll know.”

So we opened Bronwyn’s trunk, shoved the pigeon inside with Miss Peregrine, and slammed down the lid. The pigeon screeched like it was being torn apart.

I winced and shouted, “Go easy, Miss P!”

When Bronwyn opened the trunk again, a poof of pigeon feathers fluttered into the air, but the pigeon itself was nowhere to be seen.

“Oh, no—she’s ate it!” cried Bronwyn.

“No she hasn’t,” said Emma. “Look beneath her!”

Miss Peregrine lifted up and stepped aside, and there underneath her was the pigeon, alive but dazed.

“Well?” said Enoch. “Is it or isn’t it one of Miss Wren’s?”

Miss Peregrine nudged the bird with her beak and it flew away. Then she leapt out of the trunk, hobbled into the square, and with one loud squawk scattered the rest of the pigeons. Her message was clear: not only was Horace’s pigeon not peculiar, none of them were. We’d have to keep looking.

Miss Peregrine hopped toward the cathedral and flapped her wing impatiently. We caught up to her on the cathedral steps. The building loomed above us, soaring bell towers framing its giant dome. An army of soot-stained angels glared down at us from marble reliefs.

“How are we ever going to search this whole place?” I wondered aloud.

“One room at a time,” Emma said.

A strange noise stopped us at the door. It sounded like a faraway car alarm, the note pitching up and down in long, slow arcs. But there were no car alarms in 1940, of course. It was an air-raid siren.

Horace cringed. “The Germans are coming!” he cried. “Death from the skies!”

“We don’t know what it means,” Emma said. “Could be a false alarm, or a test.”

But the streets and the square were emptying fast; the old men were folding up their newspapers and vacating their benches.

“They don’t seem to think it’s a test,” Horace said.

“Since when are we afraid of a few bombs?” Enoch said. “Quit talking like a Nancy Normal!”

“Need I remind you,” said Millard, “these are not the sort of bombs we’re accustomed to. Unlike the ones that fall on Cairnholm, we don’t know where they’re going to land!”

“All the more reason to get what we came for, and quickly!” Emma said, and she led us inside.

*

The cathedral’s interior was massive—it seemed, impossibly, even larger than the outside—and though damaged, a few hardy believers knelt here and there in silent prayer. The altar was buried under a midden of debris. Where a bomb had pierced the roof, sunlight fell down in broad beams. A lone soldier sat on a fallen pillar, gazing at the sky through the broken ceiling.





We wandered, necks craned, bits of concrete and broken tile crunching beneath our feet.

“I don’t see anything,” Horace complained. “There are enough hiding places here for ten thousand pigeons!”

“Don’t look,” Hugh said. “Listen.”

We stopped, straining to hear the telltale coo of pigeons. But there was only the ceaseless whine of air-raid sirens, and below that a series of dull cracks like rolling thunder. I told myself to stay calm, but my heart thrummed like a drum machine.