Hollow City (41 page)

I backed out of the room and closed the door.

*   *   *

When I returned to the meeting hall, it was nearly dark outside and the room was black as night. Because Miss Wren wouldn’t allow the gaslamps to be lit for fear they’d be seen from the street, everyone had gathered around a few candles at the big oval table, some in
chairs and others perched cross-legged on the table itself, talking in low voices and peering down at something.

At the creak of the heavy doors, everyone turned to look at me.

“Miss Wren?” Bronwyn said hopefully, straightening in her chair and squinting.

“It’s only Jacob,” said another shadowy form.

After a chorus of disappointed sighs, Bronwyn said, “Oh, hullo Jacob,” and returned her attention to the table.

As I walked toward them, I locked eyes with Emma. Holding her gaze, I saw something raw and unguarded there—a fear, I imagined, that I had in fact decided to do what she’d urged me to. Then her eyes dulled and she looked down again.

I’d been half hoping Emma had taken pity on me and told the others I was leaving already. But of course she hadn’t—I hadn’t told
her
yet. She seemed to know, though, just from reading my face as I crossed the room.

It was clear the others had no idea. They were so accustomed to my presence, they’d forgotten it was even under consideration. I steeled myself and asked for everyone’s attention.

“Wait a moment,” said a heavily accented voice, and in the candlelight I saw the snake girl and her python looking at me. “This boy here was just spewing a lot of rubbish about the place I hail from.” She turned to the only chair at the table which was empty and said, “My people call it
Simhaladvipa
—dwelling place of lions.”

From the chair Millard replied, “I’m sorry, but it says right here in plain calligraphy:
The Land of Serendip
. The peculiar cartographers who made this were not in the business of making things up!”

Then I got a little closer and saw what it was they were arguing over. It was a Map of Days, though a much larger edition than the one we’d lost at sea. This one stretched practically across the table, and was as thick as a brick stood on end. “I know my own home, and it’s called
Simhaladvipa
!” the snake girl insisted, and her python uncoiled from her neck and shot across the table to bang its
nose against the Map, indicating a teardrop-shaped island off India’s coast. On this map, however, India was called
Malabar
, and the island, which I knew to be Sri Lanka, was overlaid with slinky script that read
Land of Serendip
.

“It’s pointless to argue,” said Millard. “Some places have as many names as they have occupants to name them. Now please ask your serpent to back away, lest he crinkle the pages.”

The snake girl harrumphed and muttered something, and the python slunk away to coil around her neck again. All the while, I couldn’t stop staring at the book. The one we’d lost was impressive enough, though I’d seen it opened only once, at night, by the skittish orange firelight of the burning home for peculiar children. This one was of another scale entirely. Not only was it orders of magnitude larger, but it was so ornate that it made the other look like so much leather-bound toilet paper. Colorful maps spilled across its pages, which were made from something stronger than paper, calfskin maybe, and edged with gold. Lush illustrations and legends and blocks of explanatory text stuffed the margins.

Millard noticed me admiring it and said, “Isn’t it stunning? Excepting perhaps the
Codex Peculiaris
, this edition of the Map is the finest book in all peculiardom. It took a team of cartographers, artists, and bookmakers a lifetime to create, and it’s said that Perplexus Anomalous himself drew some of the maps. I’ve wanted to see it in person ever since I was a boy. Oh, I am
so
pleased!”

“It’s really something,” I said, and it was.

“Millard was just showing us some of his favorite parts,” said Olive. “I like the pictures best!”

“To take their minds off things,” Millard explained, “and make the waiting easier. Here, Jacob, come and help me turn the pages.”

Rather than ruin Millard’s moment with my sad announcement, I decided it could wait a little while. I wasn’t going anywhere until morning, at least, and I wanted to enjoy a few more minutes with my friends unburdened by weightier things. I sidled up next to
Millard and slipped my fingers under the page, which was so large that it took both my hands and his to turn.

We pored over the Map. I was absorbed by it—especially the far-flung and lesser-known parts. Naturally, Europe and its many loops were well-defined, but farther afield things got sketchier. Vast swaths of Africa were simply blank.
Terra incognita
. The same was true of Siberia, although the Map of Days had its own name for Russia’s Far East:
The Great Far-Reaching Solitude
.

“Are there loops in these places?” asked Olive, pointing to a void that stretched across much of China. “Are there peculiars there, like us?”

“Certainly there are,” Millard said. “Peculiarness is determined by genes, not geography. But large portions of the peculiar world have simply not been explored.”

“Why not?”

“I suppose we were too busy surviving.”

It occurred to me that the business of surviving precluded a great many things, exploring and falling in love not least among them.

We turned more pages, hunting for blank spots. There were many, and all had fanciful names.
The Mournful Kingdom of Sand. The Land Made in Anger. A High Place Full of Stars
. I mouthed the words silently to myself, appreciating their roundness.

At the margins lurked fearsome places the Map called
Wastes
. The far north of Scandinavia was
The Icy Waste
. The middle of Borneo:
The Stifling Waste
. Much of the Arabian peninsula:
The Pitiless Waste
. The southern tip of Patagonia:
The Cheerless Waste
. Certain places weren’t represented at all. New Zealand. Hawaii. Florida, which was just an ingrown nub at America’s foot, barely there.

Looking at the Map of Days, even the places that sounded most forbidding evoked in me a strange longing. It reminded me of long-ago afternoons spent with my grandfather studying historic maps in
National Geographic
—maps drawn long before the days of airplanes and satellites, when high-resolution cameras couldn’t see into
the world’s every nook and cranny. When the shape of now-familiar coastlines was guesswork. When the depths and dimensions of icy seas and forbidding jungles were cobbled together from rumors and legends and the wild-eyed ramblings of expeditioners who’d lost half their party exploring them.

While Millard rambled on about the history of the Map, I traced with my finger a vast and trackless desert in Asia.
Where the Winged Creature Ends Not Its Flight
. Here was a whole world yet to be discovered, and I had only just cracked its surface. The thought filled me with regret—but also a shameful kind of relief. I would see my home again, after all, and my parents. And maybe it was childish, this old urge to explore for exploring’s sake. There was romance in the unknown, but once a place had been discovered and cataloged and mapped, it was diminished, just another dusty fact in a book, sapped of mystery. So maybe it was better to leave a few spots on the map blank. To let the world keep a little of its magic, rather than forcing it to divulge every last secret.

Maybe it was better, now and then, to wonder.

And then I told them. There was no point in waiting any longer. I just blurted it out: “I’m leaving,” I said. “When this is all over, I’m going back home.”

There was a moment of shocked silence. Emma met my eyes, finally, and I could see tears standing in them.

Then Bronwyn got up from the table and threw her arms around me. “Brother,” she said. “We’ll miss you.”

“I’ll miss you, too,” I said. “More than I can say.”

“But
why
?” said Olive, floating up to my eye level. “Was I too irritating?”

I put my hand on her head and pushed her back down to the floor. “No, no, it’s got nothing to do with you,” I said. “You were great, Olive.”

Emma stepped forward. “Jacob came here to help us,” she said. “But he has to go back to his old life, while it’s still there waiting
for him.”

The children seemed to understand. There was no anger. Most of them seemed genuinely happy for me.

Miss Wren popped her head into the room to give us a quick update—everything was going marvelously, she said. Miss Peregrine was well on her way to recovery. She’d be ready by morning. And then Miss Wren was gone again.

“Thank the gods,” said Horace.

“Thank the birds,” said Hugh.

“Thank the gods
and
the birds,” said Bronwyn. “All the birds in all the trees in all the forests.”

“Thank Jacob, too,” said Millard. “We never would’ve made it this far without him.”

“We never even would’ve made it off the
island
,” said Bronwyn. “You’ve done so much for us, Jacob.”

They all came and hugged me, each of them, one by one. Then they drifted away and only Emma was left, and she hugged me last—a long, bittersweet embrace that felt too much like goodbye.

“Asking you to leave was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do,” she said. “I’m glad you came around. I don’t think I’d have had the strength to ask again.”

“I hate this,” I said. “I wish there were a world where we could be together in peace.”

“I know,” she said. “I know, I know.”

“I wish …,” I started to say.

“Stop,” she said.

I said it anyway. “I wish you could come home with me.”

She looked away. “You know what would happen to me if I did.”

“I know.”

Emma disliked long goodbyes. I could feel her steeling herself, trying to pull her pain inside. “So,” she said, businesslike. “Logistics. When Miss Peregrine turns human, she’ll lead you back through the carnival, into the underground, and when you pass through the
changeover, you’ll be back in the present. Think you can manage from there?”

“I think so,” I said. “I’ll call my parents. Or go to a police station, or something. I’m sure there’s a poster of my face in every precinct in Britain by now, knowing my dad.” I laughed a little, because if I hadn’t, I might’ve started crying.

“Okay, then,” she said.

“Okay, then,” I said.

We looked at each other, not quite ready to let go, not sure what else to do. My instinct was to kiss her, but I stopped myself. That wasn’t allowed anymore.

“You go,” she said. “If you never hear from us again, well, one day you’ll be able to tell our story. You can tell your kids about us. Or your grandkids. And we won’t entirely be forgotten.”

I knew then that, from now on, every word that passed between us would hurt, would be wrapped up with and marked by the pain of this moment, and that I needed to pull away now or it would never stop. So I nodded sadly, hugged her one more time, and retreated to a corner to sleep, because I was very, very tired.

After awhile, the others dragged mattresses and blankets into the room and made a nest around me, and we packed together for warmth against the encroaching chill. But as the others began to bed down, I found myself unable to sleep, despite my exhaustion, and I got up and paced the room for a while, watching the children from a distance.

I’d felt so many things since our journey began—joy, fear, hope, horror—but until now, I’d never once felt alone. Bronwyn had called me brother, but that didn’t sound right anymore. I was a second cousin to them at best. Emma was right: I could never understand. They were so old, had seen so much. And I was from another world. Now it was time to go back.

*   *   *

Eventually, I fell asleep to the sound of ice groaning and cracking in the floors beneath us and the attic above. The building was alive with it.

That night, strange and urgent dreams.

I am home again, doing all the things I used to do. Tearing into a fast-food hamburger—big, brown, and greasy. Riding shotgun in Ricky’s Crown Vic, bad radio blaring. At the grocery store with my parents, sliding down long, too-bright aisles, and Emma is there, cooling her hands in the ice at the fish counter, meltwater running everywhere. She doesn’t recognize me.

Then I’m at the arcade where I had my twelfth birthday party, firing a plastic gun. Bodies bursting, blood-filled balloons.

Jacob where are you

Then school. Teacher’s writing on the board, but the letters don’t make sense. Then everyone’s on their feet, hurrying outside. Something’s wrong. A loud noise rising and falling. Everyone standing still, heads craned to the sky.

Air raid.

Jacob Jacob where are you

Hand on my shoulder. It’s an old man. A man without eyes. Come to steal mine. Not a man—a thing—a monster.

Running now. Chasing my old dog. Years ago she’d broken away from me, run off with her leash still attached and got it wrapped around a branch while trying to tree a squirrel. Strangled herself. We spent two weeks wandering the neighborhood calling her name. Found her after three. Old Snuffles.

The siren deafening now. I run and a car pulls alongside and picks me up. My parents are inside, in formal wear. They won’t look at me. The doors lock. We’re driving and it’s stifling hot outside, but the heater is on and the windows are up, and the radio is loud but tuned to the garble between stations.

Mom where are we going

She doesn’t answer.

Dad why are we stopping here

Then we’re out, walking, and I can breathe again. Pretty green place. Smell of fresh-cut grass. People in black, gathered around a hole in the ground.

A coffin open on a dais. I peer inside. It’s empty but for an oily stain slowly spreading across the bottom. Blacking the white satin.
Quick, close the lid!
Black tar bubbles out from the cracks and grooves and drips down into the grass and sinks into the earth.